Valley of the Shadow
by Nightfall Rising
Summary: Britain, 1980. No one cares what's fair when their people are on the line. Truth would be subjective even if everyone told it, and this is a Slytherin war: smoke and smiles, masks and mirrors. CH 20 & 21: Severus's job interview doesn't catch him *exactly* the fish he was angling for, and he hears something he should not have. (Yes. That.)
1. London (Preamble)

**Summary:** Gryffindor isn't what Slytherin sees in it, and the reverse is even more true. The Potters don't know they look different depending on where you're standing, the Blacks know exactly how they come across but can't be arsed to care, and Severus Snape isn't exactly who anyone thinks he is—least of all himself.

Roll up your sleeves, slip into your cloak, and slap that dagger on your belt. This is war, people—pick a side! Oh, what the hell. Pick three.

**Disclaimer**: Profitless fanwork

**Warnings**: by chapter. Here, some bad language. And Severus-brain.

**Tempo:** War coverage, yes. Nonetheless, this fic is an exploration, not a gory plunge or thriller. It's in no hurry.

**Notes:** below. Extensive. Skip 'em if you like, they'll be here if you start wondering about discrepancies with things Harry thinks he knows and so on.

* * *

**Valley of the Shadow  
**_by nightfall_

**Preamble**

There wasn't much time between the Halloween sky falling and being swallowed by the grey to work out which halfhearted flutters of chaos-butterfly wings had shattered the world. It was enough for Sirius to realize that Pete must have been feeling like a fifth wheel for years, although not enough to learn to take any blame.

It took longer for Severus, who didn't wait a nanosecond to start the debate on whether it would be most useful and more of a penance to kill himself or go on teaching, to decide it had probably begun with the Thing With The Ducks (Of Which We Do Not Speak). Of course, he had rather more on his calendar.

London

The ducks had happened before even the first of the series of war-related tragedies that had really hit home for either of them. Back then, the war had still been mostly underground, and in comparison to what it became later it had felt like a game. Back then, Severus's old Housemates had still only been killing and tormenting people they didn't see as people, and only a few of them.

Even then he hadn't been thrilled about it, not by a long road. Unfortunately, his position was, as he saw it, caught in the undertow, heading for a tall waterfall, with quicksand on one bank and crocodiles on the other. After his years at school, he'd found very little to choose between Duly Constituted Authority and the Death Eaters, and the scant years since graduation hadn't changed his mind.

Didn't both sides have their bullies, their torturers of prisoners? Didn't both sides do unforgivable things? Didn't they both think a particular culture, whether it was the muggle or the Slytherin one, made everyone who was tainted by it inhuman and unworthy of consideration, acceptance, and the protection of justice and equitably enforced law? Didn't they both operate on stupid, short-sighted, narrow-minded, change-phobic, wizard-centric, self-righteous sets of assumptions and values that didn't hold up well in the face of real life?

That being the case (and he went on believing it had been the case until he died, as nothing ever persuaded him otherwise), he reasoned then that the crocodiles didn't live where he slept, whereas the quicksand wasn't actually slavering for his blood. In that case: cautiously experiment with snowshoes.

No matter how disgusted he got, or how afraid, it never once occurred to him to leave the country. But then, he never claimed to be undamaged enough to qualify for sanity. Except out loud to other people. Which totally didn't count.

It wasn't the only thing he lied about, although it was probably the only lie he put into words that worked even a little bit. Years and years of careful groundwork had left most of his fellow Slytherin alums looking down at him indulgently, as a more useful than usual mascot. He was clever but naïve, scrappy but squeamish. Proud for his station, but knew his place and didn't fight it.

He could be trusted to behave appropriately at social gatherings, if you exercised common sense about the other guests, but had absolutely no desire to have to do so. His blood was at once impossible and impeccable. In the Slytherin view, it made what in another would have been social climbing a still-distasteful but natural and nearly mandatory attempt to gain back the standing his mother had thrown away. Still, he left no one under any misapprehension that he wanted anything more than to be self-sufficient, helpful when he could be, and left-the-fuck-alone with his books and cauldrons.

If it wasn't the ideal position for someone who wanted nothing to do with the violence and the politics and had too many allies who wanted everything to do with both, it was (he thought) the only survivable one. The problem with it was that so many of the people who felt reasonably friendly to him because of it were, when you got right down to it, monsters.

For example: Bellatrix's lumbering psychopath of a husband and his ideas about cool craft activities to share with friends. You couldn't shoot him down because he'd get huffy and break your arm, and you also couldn't shoot him down because of his goddamn excited-puppy eyes anyway, you pushover.

So you ended up a year and a half later shattered into dust in a blast-blackened house, kneeling on your demented boss's ashes with the glorious coppery hair of your first friend's corpse spilled out all over the floor instead of blood. With her _kid_ looking down at you from the crib with her eyes, sodding _burbling_ at the pretty light show, not even the sense to know the world had ended, as sociopathic and above human feeling as his surely-damned father.

…Yeah, okay, so those dots could probably use some connecting.

* * *

**Welcome aboard**.

**On style**: The first few chapters are not typical. I'll post until we get to one that is, first time, insofaras there's such a thing as typical. Future posts will be one chapter at a time, unless they're really short.

**Warning-related:  
** The likelihood of anything in the story being darker than chapter three is similar to that of Severus dressing up in Albus's loudest dressing gown to do a rendition of Hello My Baby in the Great Hall before his coffee. _Without_ being high or having lost a bet. I'll help the squeamish skip the worst of it. I'm squeamish myself (although you may not believe me in a minute...)

This is the original version. The prequels (A Key Called Promise and The Wicket Gate) are the love story leading up to it. I wrote this first (up to mid-July), so you shouldn't _need_ to read them to understand what's happening, but they're where the relationships developed. I.e: at Hogwarts. If you would prefer to read a love-and-war story where the love is platonic, hit backspace, you want the gen version.

**Canon Compliance**

It is advised that the reader be familiar with the biography of Harry Potter written by Ms. Rowling. The reader should be aware that this seven-volume series was fact-checked by Ms. Skeeter rather than Miss Granger, and cannot be relied on in the matter of dates. Furthermore, Ms. Rowling's books are written from the point of view of the subject, and not only contain a distinctly pro-Gryffindor bias but largely confine themselves to what Mr. Potter saw, heard, assumed, and speculated.

THIS IS A SLYTHERIN STORY. Truth is subjective, there is no whole truth, there is no one truth, and people lie. The Riddle wars are well-named.

**Reviews**  
Yes, please(please please please please). They are fed and hugged and usually answered when I see them. Unless they were rude or the answer would give spoilers (or I had brain-fry that day). I love questions that let me chat about the characters and the world and philosophy and magic etc etc, and will often share the answers to ones I think were neat or illuminating with the class. Also, while there is a LOT of this already written, it isn't finished (ahahahahaohno), so there's always a chance you could say something really helpful. Exciting me to sit down and write a page is definitely helpful, especially during SADD season but really always.

**Right then.**  
In the right place? Keys, wallet, phone? Cloak, dagger, wand? Know what side you're on? Good catch, quite right, trick question. Let's roll.


	2. MAY 1980: Stonehenge

**warnings **for history, Snape-brain, and Death-Eaterly ideas of cool craft projects to share with friends (ie: horror, or at least very sad ewwwww)

* * *

**MAY, 1980**

Stonehenge

How can you pinpoint when something began?

The case could be made that the Riddle wars started when old Fergus Mountjoy died and the self-styled 'Lord Voldemort' took over leadership of the Knights of Walpurgis, scoring himself some legitimacy with the old blood. Or when those who followed Albus Dumbledore's lead closed ranks in the Ministry and made their policy of keeping Riddle's cronies out of power a little too obvious, made him choose between giving up and thinking outside the box.

You could say they started when a girl in a school loo died of snakesight, or when a boy found a restricted book in a school library. Horace Slughorn blamed himself forever, but what Tom got from him wasn't detail, only confirmation. He would have found it elsewhere, sooner or later, in the darker libraries of his Slytherin friends. And let's not forget, the boy had been effectively imperious long before his first wanded spell. _Tell the truth_, O posterity: _I must not tell lies_.

Take the long view. Was it the bad mix of a cold heart, a grey orphanage, a conception black with the father's roofie-rape by potion, marred by obsession and false, forced love? But that horror had its roots in innocence, of a sort. The witch knew nothing but horror herself, knew only how to cringe and snatch. She had no way to know about sharing or giving, about having a self someone might fall in love with on their own.

Did her sad, terrifying, self-important ghoul of a father ever have a chance to learn a better way himself? How far back did that squalid madness go? Blame inbreeding, maybe, blame the pride of blood, the fear of change, fear cloaked in sneering over the alien outrage of cold iron and electricity laying open the ley lines like knives.

Or go historical. Blame Salazar Slytherin, for not wanting muggles' children at Hogwarts? As well to blame the Viking invasion, or maybe the Norman one (same saga, new verse). How long did it take to build a miracle like Hogwarts, even with magic and in an age of cathedrals? How long _do_ wizards live, and are we to take 'a thousand years ago' quite literally? Assume an era with a modicum of British literacy and maybe we can blame Stephen and Matilda for letting loose a civil war on muggle England, for creating a generation whose parents lived together as enemies.

We need assume no such thing. Hogwarts serves all Britain now, but did it always? Did Avalon teach the England of Romans and Druids, were the wizards of Eire called the Tuatha de Danaan, living and learning in their sidhe? It was rough above Hadrian's Wall for a long, long time, clan politics touchy enough on their own even before Church and British-royal squabbles bled north. What high-school teacher doesn't dream of keeping all the warring-gang kids out?

Blame the diseases the plaguey, poxy, fleabitten muggles didn't know how to prevent, blame the young Church for lumping magic and all foreign gods in with the devil and healthful, sanitary cleanliness in with ungodly vanity. Blame the slow rebirth of literacy and international communication that complicated the secrecy of a private little world in a dark, dark age.

The printing press hadn't left China yet (would wizards have shared innovation internationally, those covert creatures?), and handwritten accounts are, for obvious reasons, rare. Books are fragile, and so are stories passed down in an oral tradition. A thousand years and the hurt echoes of broken friendships can change a man. They can turn an old man who valued family, clever enough to know a child come to the brilliance of magic was spoiled for the weary, grubbing muggle world for good, into a chilly, heartless snob. Easy as smothering spoiled meat with cinnamon or sandalwood to hide the color, taste, and slime—what, you don't do that anymore? Modern times, man, go figure.

Or come forward again, make the estimate conservative. Maybe the earliest the war could be said to have started, really, was when the thing who had been Tom Riddle scattered the shards of his soul and began to lose his mind. Maybe the attack on the Orkneys, or the disappearances? Or (let's be scrupulous), maybe a war hasn't begun until it's been declared. Call it begun with the first Dark Mark in the sky. No, call it the fifth, the tenth: the first few weren't authorized. Riddle appreciated his followers' pride, but while he was more or less compos mentis, their lack of discipline seriously pissed him off. He had _plans,_ fellas; no mavericks need apply. Or, you know, keep breathing.

For the skinny kid from the living-ghost town, the war got really rolling at the 1980 Beltane fire. Taller than the manor house, fragrant and intoxicating with potion-soaked woods (which he had brewed himself, thank you and you're welcome, whose smoke he was not breathing in due to an apparently unique preference for uninterrupted sanity), its enchanted drumbeats pulsed ancient, potent magics into the earth, thrilling and drilling up through everyone's feet. It would have been a wonderful night, an exhilarating party, if only there hadn't been _people_ there.

Severus's flatmate had promised not to leave him alone, and hadn't. What he had done was to go a little overenthusiastic trying mixes of various other drinks with old Sluggy's infamous oak-matured mead, rendering himself completely useless as either a companion or social armor. Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. Evan could go unconcernedly without for months, but only exercised actual self-control if he had an actual reason.

And he would pay dearly for it. Severus might go so far as to make him try to learn to fry eggs again. Or at least make coffee. By neutralizing himself he'd left Severus with the choice of eating and drinking things that had been lying on a table all night for anyone to play amusing pranks with (ahahahano), talking to people (ugh), or (shudder) dancing in public. Leaving before Narcissa yawned would have been very nearly suicidal.

At the time, he'd thought himself fortunate that it had been Rodolphus Lestrange who'd wandered over to his bit of shadow for a chat. Unquestionably one of the most dangerous when he wanted to be, Rus was, unlike many another Slytherin and particularly his wife, largely affable to people he didn't mean to kill.

More than that, as the one the Dark Lord usually turned to when he wanted some artifact or expert somewhere acquired for use, profit or study, he'd been all over the world. He could talk about interesting things for quite long periods before getting bored or turning the subject to hunting (of one sort or another. He didn't differentiate).

Unless a person is actually sneezed on, catching cold is usually a subtle affair. One can think back and remember someone was coughing, but it rarely registers until the incubation period is over and the symptoms have begun. The moment a lethal disease comes in may be easier to pinpoint. They, thank whatever you thank, tend to need closer contact, more intimate exchanges, first or secondhand. They don't burn coming in either, though. It's still subtle. One doesn't immediately know. Did some collective consciousness shared by Wizarding Britain shift in unease? Severus didn't.

When he thought back, though, he did remember Rus getting all enthused over the difference between Mongolian and Viking treatments of the cups they'd made of their enemies skulls. And he remembered an unguarded (foolish!) question that had revealed his ignorant assumption that the cups were made from the lower parts of the skull (so as to stand up better, balancing on the teeth, he'd thought. Holes can be filled).

He did _not_ remember asking for a demonstration. He _knew_ he hadn't. It wasn't a thing he would have asked for. _He did not want one_. A week later, Rus was blithely hauling a corpse into his stillroom anyway.

She was a werewolf who had been a muggle just last month, and she was fourteen. He knew this because he'd chased her out of Belby's lab with the ink not dry on her Registry certificate and the charm on her portkey to the transforming chambers (cells) still smelling faintly of blackberries and burnt rubber.

Well, he'd had to get rid of her, hadn't he? The Wolfsbane potion had had, at that point, so many godawful side effects, some of which looked to be permanent, that it was completely unconscionable. He'd insinuated and fretted until Belby had (_finally_) gotten the bright idea of ordering his apprentices to include 'possibly having a future' to the list of reasons to refuse a werewolf guinea-pig status. All a female one living in the muggle world would have had to do to survive and succeed was tell all her future employers she got debilitating cramps with clockwork regularity. Her romantic life would have been more complicated, but people had managed these things before.

There was a scorched hole where her heart should have been. So much for that, then.

He probably would have been hard put-to it not to throw up even if he'd never seen her before. Up until that point, he'd successfully avoided being confronted with that sort of thing in person. It hadn't even been difficult. The murder of muggles was tolerated if one was careful, but not encouraged, not then. Severus had seen dead people before, but only because his mother was (although her muggle flock would have laughed uneasily to hear the phrase) a village witch.

As it happened, though, he hadn't just seen her in passing. He knew she played the guitar and wanted to switch to bass because she and her friends were going to start a band as soon as they could agree on a sound. He knew she had a bit of a pash for the friend who meant to be their lead singer, and had had to drench her in his most withering sarcasms to dissuade her from telling this doubtlessly reliable person about her curse. He knew she was more worried that the transformations would bring on arthritis in her fingers than about any of the ways it was actually likely to destroy her life. It was the kind of denial he could respect.

He knew her da called her his little songbird when he was proud and Popkin when he wanted to embarrass her in front of her friends, because the man had done both right in front of him. He knew her damned blood pressure, and that she got chattier the more nervous she was, and more inclined to drop her aitches. He'd given her a topical potion for her joints and a potable potion against the pain and the scarring, told her to write his mother when she needed more (Mam could always use business, and if it came by postman it wouldn't even get her in trouble), and kicked her out of his clinic.

He'd controlled himself with the other Death Eater, though—what a name, but that's wizards for you. Names give shape, so you call things what you mean them to become. Of course, it doesn't always turn out as you intended. Take Regulus Arcturus. A bit of a feline twist to him, but not exactly the panthery sort. If his parents had wanted him fierce, maybe they shouldn't have put a RABbit in his name. If they'd wanted him safe and sensible, giving him King Arthur's name might have been a mistake, even if it did flatter his grandfather, even if they meant him to be a rugged bear.

Or take his brother (please), Sirius Orion. A person who took life less soberly you could not hope to meet. His parents might have wanted a grim watchdog over the bloodlines of their noble house, hunting down their enemies. What they got was a brave and bright-eyed puppy who wanted nothing better from life but to play with his friends and chase birds and squirrelly snakes, more than a bit of both an SOB and a sob-story before he was done.

Yes, Severus (adj.: , strict, harsh, unadorned, intense, 2. demanding great ability, skill, or resilience. A name for emperors and saints, not milltown schoolteachers, and it hadn't softened the old bastard on a half-blood grandson one jot. Ta, Mam) had controlled himself with Rodolphus (the famous wolf: an operatic name), stuffing himself into himself until he didn't feel a single damned (or damning) thing but cool interest as Rus opened her head up on his workbench. With a bone-saw, because liking to work with their hands was something he and Lestrange had in common.

The episode would have wrecked him even if that had been the end of it, but Rus had claimed that since he was doing Severus a favor, Severus could jolly well clean up. And then he'd faffed off. When Severus thought about it later, he was fairly sure the world wouldn't have ended if Rus had done his own damned corpse-disposal.

_And_ if nothing else had done the same butterfly-flapping work, _or_ if Severus hadn't (let's not call a spade a short-handled soil-transporting implement) panicked and gotten clever instead of re-growing her skull and dumping the body near her school.

That was the problem with him, he thought, no matter what other people said it was. His problem was that he didn't react to panic like normal people. If he wasn't too angry in the hot style at the same time to have proper thoughts at all, he _would_ try to think his way out of trouble. It never, ever, _ever_ worked out well for him.

Which wasn't to say that when he got clever he wasn't genuinely clever. Rather, he felt obscurely, he was in the grip of some bias of destiny or the universe that either enjoyed his pain and humiliation or wanted something specific to come of his life that wasn't at all what he himself intended. Things had gotten better since he'd left school, but his life had left him inclined to think the former.

When Lestrange had whistled his way off, Severus kept himself on ice. He hadn't expected to need instant access to tranquilizers since school, and the best one that didn't turn one's brain all fuzzy would take too long to make. The chilled-steel detachment of his mind as it was didn't let him delude himself that if he returned to himself without it he'd do anything but gibber, vomit, and possibly get drunk.

Not useful, and quite distasteful on all counts. Evan might get sloshed like a gentleman, happy and warm like everyone's dream of drunkenness, but he'd been born under generous stars. Severus wasn't afraid to have a drink with dinner, or a few with friends, but he never, _ever_ wanted to find out what kind of a drunk his father's son would be.

So he cast his stasis charms, sanitized everything he could without moving the body, and sat down to think.

Severus liked mysteries—not in real life, where they gave him the jitters, but on paper. Witty people moving themselves about in a living puzzle for you to figure out, and no one bothering _you_ because you were above it, watching and thinking and racing minds with the 'tec.

Puzzles. Puzzles, words, magic, and intimate access to intimate allies you were mutually fond with and could trust. The best things in the world, almost impossible to rank, and none really separate from the others. Food, most days, he could take or leave. Making People And Especially Kreacher Taste-Test Experiments was another matter. But then, experimenting fell under puzzles, and harmlessly tormenting one's friends under cementing the trust in fond alliances (also, fun).

And when it wasn't torment, when something _worked,_ when you won _that look_ and their eyes lit up—that was magic. That was Evan-magic, Lily-magic, Hogwarts-magic. The best kind, the kind he could only grope blindly for, scrabble at, the kind they breathed.

But puzzles, puzzles and words. Mystery novels—any novels—hadn't been easy to get his hands on until he'd graduated. Wizards didn't really do fiction, and Slytherins _really_ didn't. He hadn't dared be seen with muggle books at Hogwarts, and the grey stretch of purgatory his parents called home wasn't (O understatement) rich in bookshops or libraries. They hadn't had even one till he was fourteen. But he'd pored through enough of them to know in his bones that killing was to getting away with it what chopping veg for stew was to harvesting erumpent horn.

Not that anyone in Rus's cohort ever seemed to run into any difficulty about body disposal, and he'd seen more than enough to suspect they were well-practiced. However, he also knew, also in his bones, that he not only didn't have what gave them their luck but was never going to so much as recognize it if it licked his throat and proposed.

So he couldn't rely on whatever charmed, careless good fortune, divine favor, or bafflingly unavailable knowledge or talents saw them through. And he hadn't, damn it, had the foresight to start up a batch of Felix six months ago. He'd start on that the next time Evan went to a party or long dinner he could skip, definitely. For now, though, he was going to have to be intelligent about it.

Right then. What caught murderers up in the books? Initial stupidity or carelessness, or a failure to understand the law's hunters. He had confidence in those areas, so what else?

Letting themselves be associated with the victim or the crime scene. A small problem there, but not insurmountable. It was on record she'd visited the clinic, but the way Rus had killed her could have been done by a werewolf hunter. Severus and his lab-mates were the opposite of that. He could tell anyone, under veritaserum, that he'd sent her away because he'd wanted her to have the best chance in life her new species would allow her. A silly, harmless kid like her didn't need bone spurs, kidney stones, liver damage, personality changes, or the chance the silver allergy would mutate and start reacting to alloys. She could have had a life. He couldn't just say it under veritaserum, he could yell it, rant it, scream it. If he let himself think about it hard enough, he might very nearly cry.

Stop. Problem at hand.

What else? Interfering in the investigation. In one way or another, not trusting to their preparations and going back to make sure that everything was still all right.

Did he trust himself not to get nervous and blow up his own cauldron making that kind of a mistake?

Absolutely not. Severus was a walking raw nerve, when not making a conscious effort to get his mind right. He knew himself to be exactly the sort of overthinking control freak with a persecution complex to jump up in the middle of the night and run out to make sure he hadn't made any mistakes and nothing had been uncovered.

Given him, he'd probably step on Evan on his way out of bed, too, thereby creating a witness. And, if he once knew about it, Ev would fret, and he might talk to Narcissa. You could never tell, with Narcissa. She might think nothing of it and tell Evan he was precious but Severus was perfectly competent, or she might not. God forbid she worried to her husband. She might do. Since the wedding she'd gone a bit delusional about his solidity, reliability, and good sense. But if she did, instead of showing any of that, Luke would unquestionably go sneer at Bellatrix about _her_ husband being an overenthusiastic and undisciplined oaf, and she'd… no. Better not to even think about it.

Besides, Potter had a nasty habit of stalking Severus at odd hours. Which was not only irritating but idiotic. Severus was unique among his acquaintance in having a real job that not only had long hours but required enough concentration during them that failing to get enough sleep would be a real problem.

More, it was his association with the predators who _had_ free time that had given Potter the excuse to hate him out loud in the first place. Why didn't he go stalk Mulciber or Avery? Granted, stalking Severus was a lot safer than stalking Mulciber, but Avery would probably never even notice. Potter might even catch him doing something that would get him and his fists and wand and probably-by-now-disease-riddled unmentionables off the streets. If the idiot wanted to play cloak-and-dagger that badly… oh, well.

Anyway. Problem: clandestine movements would probably be noticed. Problem: Severus didn't trust himself to do what was needed and leave it at that forever, no nervous checking back. Solution: act openly in the sunlight and don't leave a crime scene to check.

New problem: how to not just hide a body but make it absolutely disappear?

A banishment? It would turn up somewhere else, and who knew what the Aurors could use these days to trace a body back to its banisher or its killer. He'd have to visit a volcano before he could send it into one, and stories suggested the ocean wasn't reliable, even with concrete and chickenwire, Logic suggested otherwise, but _never challenge Murphy's Law._

There were potions that would dissolve even bone, but their ingredients cost. Acquiring the ingredients would cause its own problems, and there would be the problem of, well, all those potions would survive her body, eating through things being what they did, and make more problems wherever they were used.

If he used a reducto, he'd be _breathing_ her. Not only that, but he'd be breathing her here, in the space that was most his own, most himself. Even though the chill he retched a little at that thought, although admittedly afterwards he very calmly made himself a pot of tea.

If he did it outside, _everyone_ would be breathing her. And (another crack in the ice, as quickly smoothed over) what if her curse hadn't died with her? That maniac Rookwood was trying to aerosolize the virus already, down in the bowels of the DoM, God and only-maybe the Dark Lord only knew why. _No_.

He thought about pulling some blood for comparison to a live sample, but he'd need the equipment at the lab to do it properly. And that automatically recorded all its findings.

Ripping efficiently through the indices of all his own books left him with no useful miracles, and asking for the use of anyone else's might Provide A Clue to anyone asking questions later.

Last option: make something eat her.

Of course, there were plenty of things that would eat a corpse, even a werewolf corpse. Few in England, though, and almost none outside the forest in Hogsmeade. Getting her to any of them would create more problems than just risking his own skin, which was in itself something to be considered. It wasn't as though he made a habit of visiting animals like that; he wasn't Hagrid. Nor was his preference for harvesting his own ingredients so strong that his past behavior would explain an international portkey now.

Solution? Feed her to something that _wouldn't_ eat a corpse.

It was that line of thought that brought him, half his usual height, carrying a rectangular plastic bag that just filled his pocket-sized arms, to the park.

* * *

_credit for the chickenwire gambit to Sir Pterry, of course.  
_


	3. St James' Park

**Warnings** for worse horror. And language, including some that was PC at the time. I tried to argue him into being more polite, I don't know, it's probably not all that surprising really. I mean, seven years in a dorm trying to keep up with Sirius 'Look, Ma, I can be more outrageous than this!' Black.

Everything Chinese-language related, including the grammar, is indirectly credited to my favorite (and long-suffering) Mandarin teacher, who will remain anonymous so that he never finds out how his teachings are being perverted. 不客气, _-老师 [You're welcome, Mr. W].

This chapter is the one around which the story was written. It was originally a scene in an LJ game, the Hex Files, played out between myself and the inimitable **Katilara,** who's the only person ever who made me LIKE this guy, or see how a reasonably normal person could have ended up where he did. The canon version was, er, definitely never, um, yeah, ick (I can actually see that too, now, poor guy, good lord did he need an extraction). But bear with me here: not all dark forces are sorcerous.

If you're squeamish, you may want to stop at 'not for people.' Or, if possible, skip to the last four or five paragraphs. I'll explain as delicately as possible in the chapter four notes. I don't say just skip the chapter or even the end, because this is one of the characters I'd like you to meet from his own point of view. Before, well, this happens. Everyone looks different from the inside, is my point.

* * *

St. James' Park, London

If Pete was thinking anything as he left the British Museum, it was how lucky he was to be able to get outside for a bit on a May afternoon that wasn't grey or grizzling.

It had been a long day. Some utter twat had enchanted the floor in front of a statue of Tiberius Claudius Nero. It had been confunding anyone standing on it to believe the old emperor was speaking to them—in whatever language they thought in, not Latin, and quite filthily.

He was inclined to suspect the Prewett twins. Thankfully, it wasn't his job to make that sort of determination or go after them. Even if the Old Man wouldn't have had something to say about Order members getting each other into trouble, he was just as pleased to leave facing their very inventive wands to someone else.

It was, however, his job to argue with the curator until he let Peter take the bit of floor up, and then to replace it. At once. It had taken _all day. _The Museum was warded tighter than ol' Snivvy's footlocker (fond memories!). Getting through the wards was no problem, but he wished he'd had Paddy or Remus about to get them set up again, and Jamie to fix the floor. Making it look right again had been incredibly tedious, especially with the curator looming over him and fussing.

He hoped it hadn't been the Prewetts. The trouble he'd get into for letting them reap their own sowing was almost as bad as the trouble he'd get into for Interfering With the Evidence-Gathering Process. Dumbledore had this way of _looking_ at you.

Yes, this had the potential to be a real problem, and Peter Pettigrew was not a man who liked problems in his life. He had enough to deal with without actual problems. It was entirely gloom-making.

By the time he was let flee, the offending bit of floor carefully wrapped and shrunken in his pocket for examination back at the office, it was right on the line of being too late in the afternoon to be sent out on some other assignment. Since the park was right in front of him and the day was such a nice one that his mother would have sniffed and called it suspiciously and gaudily French, he decided to commune with nature for a bit on his way back.

Evidently, a lot of people had been thinking on the same lines. Pete liked that idea, that he and half of England had been on the same wavelength. It felt friendly, on a warm day like this. There were families all over the place, kids playing ball and shouting and all. He felt his shoulders fall a good three inches as the sounds of life settled around him, chased away the lofty chill of the museum's halls.

He ambled around the lake towards his favorite tree, greeting witches and wizards he knew and discreetly making balls just a tiny bit bouncier, kites just a tad sturdier and more streamlined. Once he passed close by a picnicking muggle couple whose tin of sardines his animagery-sensitized nose said would be a problem for them in a few hours. Not knowing how to actually fix that, he arranged for a bird to make it more obviously inedible.

There was a tiny little Oriental kid sitting in the old oak when he got there, staring morosely at the ducks through his bony knees. Pete gave him a smile. He didn't get one back, but the kid wasn't being rude. Rather, he didn't seem to notice him at all, just went on staring moodily off into forever. Pete shrugged to himself, and settled down against the trunk to soak in the dappled sunshine and the smells of loam and water.

After a while, a really _vicious_ little rubber ball hit him in the leg. Angling his head up with a smile and tossing the ball back, he called, "Hey, be careful where you bounce that thing!"

The boy squawked, jerked, nearly fell out of the tree, and stared down, cementing Pete's suspicion that the kid hadn't even seen him until then. "Ah—sorry!" he stammered, with one of those light-as-air accents that the Chinese muggles developed, wearing out recordings of Churchill to help them practice English.

"You look awfully somber," Pete commented. "Everything OK up there?"

The kid looked like he didn't understand at least one of those words. After a second, he gave up trying and volunteered, "We are have picnic. But was sit."

His smile widened, and he sympathized, "Your picnic was sit, huh? That can be troublesome. Er, trouble."

"Father angry," the kid agreed with a wince, and held up a bag of rather squished bread, all over crumbs. "Mother say go, feed birds."

"Well, be careful," Pete advised, "Some of them bite."

"Bite, I throw!" the kid declared, holding up his rubber ball with a big grin. "Rar!" Pete grinned, too. Uncertain again, the boy added, "If are not hide."

"Well," he laughed, "if you rar too loudly, they _will_ hide." He knew he would! "We'll have to be quiet and still. Do you think you can do that?"

The kid gave him a very puzzled look, full of scrunched-up button nose at the idea of being quiet and still. "Feed before, they are not quiet, not hide. They are GUA GUA," he quacked enthusiastically, "very noisy, and go to catch bread from air!"

"I'd like to see that," Pete admitted, grinning. "Why don't you show me how you do it?"

The boy made a thinking-about-it face, a little wicked at talking to strangers, and then agreeably clambered down from his branch. He took out a piece of bread and looked at it for a second, his face clouding. "First," he said quietly, "must give respect. Alive before. Now soon again part of life."

Pete had heard about hunters thanking meat before eating, but he thought thanking wheat and yeast was over the top. Still, you didn't argue with nice instincts. Unless you were Sirius, obviously.

The kid held out a nearly whole slice to a likely-looking bird, and sighed when all the rest came swarming in to fight over it. Evidently giving up on decorum, he shrugged and held the bag open to Pete, excitedly directing, "Make to jump!"

"Yes, sir!" Pete laughed, and started tossing chunks high enough in the air that the ducks had to snap at them.

They fed the birds in comfortable silence for a few minutes. The smell of good bread (it wasn't stale at all, which only seemed odd until he remembered that the kid was only doing this because his mother had needed him out of the way) started teasing his stomach. He'd been at the museum all day, after all, and it was past time for his tea. He surreptitiously snuck a slice or two himself, taking the edge off.

The kid caught him at it, and he gave a sheepish little smile. For a moment the expression on the little face was quite strange: blank, wide eyes, tight-throated. "Sorry," he told him. "Figured if it was good enough for the ducks… I hadn't eaten yet," he explained. "I'll save the rest for them."

"Not for people," the kid whispered, then cleared his throat and finished in a more normal tone, with an apologetic expression, "was sit." After a few more slices, he asked, with a hint of morbid curiosity, "Good?"

"It's just fine," Pete assured him.

The kid laughed with a weird, almost hysterical note, and ceremoniously handed him the last piece.

"I think that one's the scrappiest," Pete mused, pointing at a large hen goose. "Let's give it to her." He held it out, shooing the others away with his free hand. She snatched the piece away from him

and then

Pete had lived for seven years in Transfiguration Swottery Central

he knew an insufficiently permanent transfiguration falling apart when it happened _in his fingers_

the duck

in her beak

it was

it

an

it was

she swallowed it with a flip of her head and it was

he'd _eaten some _and it was

it was an

The boy had screamed and jumped backwards, right into Pete's leg

he was trembling all over, they both were

because it was

Pete breathed heavily, his hands falling protectively on the kid's shoulders. He said, very carefully, "That looked like an ear. A person's ear. But it couldn't have been. You didn't give me an ear."

"It did!" the boy agreed, shaking hard. His back heaved with hard breaths, and after a moment he burst out, "I _said_ it wasn't food for people!"

Pete's throat closed right up. He removed his hands. He backed up a step. He looked down at the kid, looked hard. Putting his hand on his wand, he asked, just as carefully, "What happened to your accent?"

The boy looked back at him, equally frozen, looking just as sickened, just as green as Pete felt. After a moment, looking far too old for his bit of a face, he sighed, "Well, sod," and punched Pete with unavoidable speed and more oomph than someone his size should have been able to manage. Right in the fork.

When the world held anything more than pain, the boy was gone, and his ball and the empty bag, too. There was no trace of him, in fact, except for the floating flesh and feathers on the water.

Pete had made himself throw up (and scourgified it, and himself) quite a few times before the Aurors got there, until he'd several times brought up only bile. By the time the first duck bulged improbably and exploded around a foot, his stomach was well and truly purged. They told him over and over that there was nothing he could have done, he'd done nothing wrong, go home, take the hottest bath he could manage, get drunk, count his blessings, forget about it. Magically, if necessary. Dumbledore, when Peter reported in, said more or less the same, with added cocoa.

But he never felt clean again on two legs. And afterwards, more and more, he started to notice, or perhaps imagine, eyes on him. Scornful, evaluating, assessing. After a while, they began to feel almost inviting.

He could never bear to tell his friends. Moony would have understood, but he would have made Pete share with the other two, so he could be comforted. Moony was an incurable optimist. Probably he had to be to not run mad with his body turned against him, lying to the world every day. But Moony _was_ an optimist. It wouldn't happen like that.

Sirius wouldn't understand his horror. Not Sirius, who'd grown up with elf heads in the hall. He'd understand why Pete was ashamed to have been fooled and used, but not what it felt like to be ruined. Not Sirius, who had clawed himself out of the dark by sheer force of will, even though it meant walking away from everything he'd ever had a right to.

And Lily and James would never have looked at him the same way again. They would have just been repelled, the way he was himself. He would never have the chance to hold the baby when it was born, in case the corruption he'd taken in was contagious somehow. They were like that, James and especially Lily, so upright and pure nothing dirty could touch them. They wouldn't let it.

He knew he'd never be nearly one person with his friends again. He could never be open with them again, never let them know he'd been forced outside their enchanted circle of perfect light. If they ever knew, they'd never see him as anything more than scum commendably but pathetically trying to be human, fumbling smelly streaks onto the skirts of their robes. They were like that. Always been that way. Look at poor old Snape.


	4. Undisclosed & Dye Urn Alley (d)

Re the last chapter, if you felt you'd better skip the experience but still need to know why, exactly, Peter feels he'll never be clean and pure like other human beings and James and Lily the Light and Righteous would surely reject him if they knew?

That bread he ate that was supposed to be for the ducks? Soylent green. He found out. Violations don't feel better because you're quite sure you didn't want them..

* * *

**Undisclosed/Dye Urn Alley (off Diagon)  
**

The Dark Lord was gracious enough to wait until Severus had had his hysterical breakdown and Evan had brutally pounded him back to some semblance of coherence to summon him. Severus was deeply, deeply grateful that, when he arrived, it was just the two of them and Acanthus, the giant death adder (_Elapidae acanthopis_, both its body and venom magically enhanced_._ Their lord, no one said out loud, was not as clever about names as he fancied himself. Severus's puns never amused anyone else either, but at least he knew it. And they made Ev groan and droop on him, which was really all he wanted. Possibly out of life. Other than curing everything, obviously).

He was less grateful, although of course it was good old-fashioned mandatory discipline to say_ thank you_ anyway, for the thoroughly unsurprising two fifteen-second rounds of Cruciatus. These were for, respectively, risking getting himself noticed without instruction when he knew very well there was often an enemy watching him closely, and making an utter botch of his follow-through.

No, not grateful, because _ohgodow with associated twitching for hours_, but even to himself he admitted to having had them coming. He privately thought he deserved worse. He shouldn't have wasted time brooding, or indulged his vengeful streak playing with Pettigrew no matter how much the simpering, sycophantic, deceptively sneaky little bastard deserved trouble. Even if all he'd meant was the private satisfaction of having made a Marauder help him and go off feeling good about it, with the option of rubbing it in his face later if advisable.

He could have gotten out cleanly if he'd been more efficient, and he should have been. He knew perfectly well that transfiguration wasn't his strong point. Digestion would have stabilized the bread, but he shouldn't have relied on its transformation lasting that long.

The long-term fallout was theoretically worlds better than the crucios, and actually galaxies worse. Apparently, despite abysmally muffing the tail end of his unauthorized little operation, he'd shown a good deal of unsuspected potential and a turn of mind that the Dark Lord could put to good use.

In particular, Voldemort was pleased that he hadn't shot up the Mark. Asked in a hurt voice why he suspected Severus of being so completely boneheaded as that, he explained that some of his more devout were so justifiably proud of their kills that they were blinded to the politics that made claiming them a Bad Idea. Boasting with the Mark was becoming a widespread dream, and keeping it from becoming more than that was becoming a struggle.

He was, therefore, instructed to consider himself available for instruction whenever 'the potioneering old fool' that might provide the Dark Lord with a carrot to tempt the werewolves with didn't need him.

"All right, Spike?" Ev asked when he dragged himself back home, anxiety showing only in the way his eyes locked onto Severus's face and stayed there. This was a pleasantry, thank god, and he didn't have to answer it. Evan only _looked_ vague and absentminded. After only a few seconds perusal Ev had maneuvered him to the sofa and was pouring him a large draught of nervine potion with a splash of whiskey in, and a dash of tincture of valerian for good measure.

Severus drank nearly all of it in one swallow, afraid a post-curse convulsion might make him drop it if he didn't hurry up. He stared into the remaining half-cup despondently and said, "He wants me to spy. Not gossip-trawling like you and Narcissa. Scout or mole."

Evan's jaw landed on the floor in tandem with the whiskey decanter. After a moment he swallowed, and said without levity, "Salazar help us all."

"As soon as possible," Severus agreed grimly, and slammed back the last measure of potion.

"Up," Ev directed, and hauled Severus into the bathroom for a long, hot soak into which he poured fragrant splashes of pine, sandalwood, and peony oils, the zest of an entire orange, and, the best by far, himself. Evan hadn't even tried for any Os on his NEWTs, but if there'd been one for hedonism, Severus kept telling him sardonically, he wouldn't have had to try.

Evan never seemed to notice this was supposed to be sarcasm rather than praise. Which was probably, Severus would never _ever_ admit, for the best. His truly encyclopaedic knowledge of how to force a mood on everyone in a room with an incense burner and a crowbar was probably useful in his work, as well, but Severus couldn't help but think it made him a bit of a walking cliche. More or less fortunately, depending on your point of view in a given moment, Evan would probably, if asked, define 'embarrassed' as 'a donkey without a saddle.'

(Because he enjoyed 'rescuing' Severus from (technically) self-inflicted concussions.)

In the morning, Severus was bothered by Sue-Fudge-from-downstairs and Amy-Bones-from-the-flat-next-door. Ostensibly, as always, they were dropping by to complain about him blaring music while cooking a ridiculously large appreciative-breakfast spread.

In fact, also as always, they were cadging for his extras, although he wasn't sure they knew it. In any case, they were both quite happy to be sent away with steaming paper bags of spiced-apple scones for the families. Which was why he'd over-cooked and not used a silencing charm in the first place.

Severus loved, loved, loved that all their neighbors were Hufflepuff alums. It wasn't a happy coincidence, either; choices like that were so obvious to Evan that he didn't really think about them. It wasn't a flat-picking criteria that would even have occurred to Severus, but it made his life so much more pleasant than it might have been. They were so easy to deal with, and he never had to have leftovers lying around if he didn't want them. He could get away with practically any neighborly sin if he made the occasional gesture they interpreted as awkwardly-attempted sociability.

He even actually quite liked Bones, as long as they didn't spend enough time together that it devolved into small talk or stories about her hearty outdoorsiness. The stories were all right, mind. It was the way she kept breaking off to tell him he looked like a plant that didn't get enough sun and then trying to drag him out to do things he neither wanted to do nor had time for.

Sitting for the Fudges' kid on occasion wasn't too bad, either. It left them grateful, which was useful, and it wasn't as if Severus had anyone else to play gobstones with. His mother wasn't exactly on the Floo. Ev was good for chess and go, but if Severus tried to make him play something messy he put on a smock and a pained expression and shuddered a lot and was generally too ridiculous not to be pounced and mussed and kissed all over his ridiculous face.

Obviously they did this often, but gobstones did not actually get played.

The neighbors made Evan happy, too, since he always had someone available for a chat or spot of useful gossip when Severus was busy, the restless and unsoothable sort of cranky, or otherwise wanted to be left alone with a journal or a cauldron or one of the books Ev didn't care for. And, Evan was always pointing out, they Knew People.

Severus usually replied to this with, "They are people, Ev."

"That's how it works," Evan would agree.

"Snob."

"Prole."

This generally ended with the neighbors pounding on the door to complain about the thumping and staying over tea to join the debate over whether it mattered whether people were People. This, Evan said, was good for them, as Amy was in government and so was Sue's husband (who they called Neil because Severus could not get through the first half of 'Cornelius' without terrible, terrible jokes). Severus said it was a botheration, and meant it, but that didn't mean he thought Ev was wrong.


	5. Malfoy Manor, Avebury, Wiltshire (d)

**Warnings**: Snobbery. Canonical fpreg. And Narcissa's affected style. Dumb blonds, yeah-huh, ok, we believe you, Slytherin...

* * *

**Malfoy Manor, Avebury, Wiltshire**

"No offense, coz," Evan said, unpacking his paints, "but sometimes I could _publicly slander_ your brother-in-law."

There was no question as to which brother-in-law he meant. The Dreadful Tonks Family Did Not Exist. Andi and the Prismlette might exist in select twigs of the family tree, very quietly, but the _Tonks Family_ didn't. And if they had existed, it would not have been technically possible to slander the Odious Mudblood-In-Law.

Evan had, actually, met Ted Tonks, in a spirit of fairness. After all, his own other half was scarcely less of a lead balloon, on paper. Half Severus's blood was beyond worthless, and though the other half was peerless, the way he'd been _raised!_ But when you got past the pedigree, the rumors, the slander that turned his hawkish, unpadded bones ugly if you listened instead of looked, the pressurized porcupine-prickles dipped in basilisk venom and Extract of Ravenclaw, the wary, bristling, skinless oversensitivity, and the complete incompetence with and lack of use for every form of social lubrication…

(Not a quick or easy project; it had taken Ev a few years of forced proximity. But when he did let you in, oh, worth it. He'd had to teach himself not to show off: what if someone else realized and, not content with sharing, tried to tempt his right hand away? Probability it would work: insignificant. Probability Severus would be amused, smug, flattered, or even annoyed instead of creeped out or some flavor of hysterical: not measurable without an engorgement charm. He still had a bit of a Thing about being noticed when he didn't mean to be. Evan loved bringing Severus down from an hysterical edge, but he greatly preferred it to be because some potions or spellcrafting journal had published something slipshod than because Severus was really upset. That was just… upsetting.)

So Evan had been willing to give Tonks the benefit of the doubt, but he hadn't been impressed. The man was pleasant enough, but nothing special. A slovenly ox, in fact. And when Evan had looked at the stains on his hands… he hoped Andi really loved the lump, and saw things in him Evan didn't. Andi had always turned too easily to potions for comfort. Evan just hoped it was him making her happy, and not what he, as a brewer, could easily give her. Or, at least, that he was too stupid to know the difference.

No, there was no doubt that he meant Rodolphus. Therefore, Narcissa merely raised her tea to her lips to smile over it at him in perplexity. "Why would I be offended, darling? He is something of an embarrassment, after all; so terribly _squirely_. I'll do it myself, if you like."

It was an open secret that Narcissa still hadn't quite forgiven Lestrange, charming in his way though he was, for worshiping her sister instead of encouraging anything like restraint in her. Of course, Bellatrix was just as disappointed about Lucius not discouraging _her_ sister's prissiness. It was for the best, everyone else (including said husbands) supposed. The prospect of what would happen if those two ever started working together instead of squabbling terrified.

"Oh, lor'!" Evan expostulated, flinching melodramatically. "Don't exert yourself on my account, Narcissa; the cobra would shred me."

"And when are you going to make an honest woman of that boy?" she asked, laughing.

"When he gets himself some decent relatives to show off for Mum, he says. Or at least nets a job with real wages and stops being so damned prickly on the subject of who buys the damned groceries," he sigh-smiled back, a bit pained by the memory of snappishness past. "Which would be, by my estimation, on or about the fifteenth of Neversoever, since all the decent-paying Potions work is commercial."

He let himself imagine, just for a moment, the absolute nightmare of Severus bored stiff brewing the same thing every day. Eeuurrgh was not the word. It would be almost as bad as Severus thinking he was _being supported_. Evan wasn't sure anything could make his life more unpleasant than that would, except his porcupine being actually dead.

"Pity," Narcissa mourned lightly, sparkling at him over her cup. "All those awful drab colors he wears… I would so like to see him in white."

"Not appropriate," he preened, shifting with smug reminiscence in his chair. Spike didn't go all soft and clingsome on him nearly often enough for it to stop being an exotic treat and get wearing. Every single time was a very special memory for him, and kept in his very special pensieve. Even if the circumstances prompting them usually, as now, made him quietly homicidal.

She zapped him lightly with her wand in mock-rebuke. "Bragging is so ill-mannered, darling!"

Evan gave her a long, slow look with humorously cocked eyebrow, which he transferred to his nearly-finished canvas before returning it to her. "You've changed your mind, then? Don't finish the painting?" he asked innocently.

"Oh, you!" she huffed, a hand curling in not-so-secret pleasure about her middle. "It isn't bragging in the least! It's only that Lucius is always so _insecure_ about making his parents proud, poor pet. I shan't leave my boy—or girl, of course—under any misapprehension about how much he's wanted."

Neither of them mentioned how very slim her frame was, including about the hips. Or how much trouble she'd had already. Or how her father had given up on a male heir when her own mother's third near-death experience wasn't the charm.

"I'll ask Spike about making a copy of his notes for you, if you like," he suggested. "In a nice binding, for some milestone birthday. So young Thingy will know how much trouble you've taken over him."

"That's a lovely idea," she said warmly, her eye only twitching a little at _T__hingy_. "Thank you, darling."

"I don't know if he will, mind," he warned, squeezing paints onto his palette. "It's exactly the sort of thing he does like to show off, but he can be awfully private about his work. The mater sent Linkin 'round to do our spring cleaning spring cleaning last week, as a Beltane present, and when he stepped into the stillroom I had to intervene before the poor old thing lost his ears."

"We'll work him 'round," she said, sedately wicked. "Don't forget to give Auntie Cal my best when you see her next, speaking of your mother. And my uncle, of course." It was Evan's father who was her uncle by blood, but she and Ev's mother were both Black women. That was apparently a much closer bond. Ev didn't ask questions.

"Will do, and mine to Aunt Dru," he said, his preparations finished. "All right, ready. I'd like you to start out sitting down today."

All was stillness and sunshine steeped in the smell of oils and minerals and Severus's mild brush-cleaning solution for a few hours, until the light was too much changed. Evan could have simulated it with a charm, naturally. When your sitters were heavily pregnant or otherwise less than sprightly, you took the excuse to end early, and did not mention their feet, backs, or bladders.

Spike's brush-cleaner wasn't any better than the commercial one as far as the actual cleaning went. But it was less smelly, and didn't eat the glue. Besides, when Spike wanted to do something for you, your choices were: let him, give a not only good but excellent reason why not while thanking him warmly for the thought from zero inches away from his mouth, or endure the rejected snarling for days.

He got quite a few positions in, turning her and moving her hands this way and that, eyes fixed hard and clever on her shapes and colors and shadows, his wand hand as light on the easel as if it were eggshell. At the side of his sight the brushes darted, buzzing and flitting like a swarm of hummingbirds, keeping up with his vision.

No one had yet worked out how to keep the canvas from flickering distractingly as it soaked up image after image, pose after pose. No matter. He'd started grinding his father's pigments, washing the un-handled brushes, and copying out shapes manually young. Nearly as young as Severus had been placed on a step-stool with a wooden spoon to practice counting his strokes on the stew and sent to scavenge leaves and flowers. Evan was an old hand by now, the flashing canvas long since become a mere drumbeat to slow his breath and pace his eye.

Narcissa called for a fresh tea tray with sandwiches while he cleaned up. When he'd settled by her and had his mouth well and truly full, she asked, "How has poor Rodolphus offended, then? Honestly, Evan, darling, I didn't think you _had_ a temper."

Even made a _most_ impolite noise around his cress-and-firecrab, very nearly a growl. She had, of course, timed her question so he wouldn't be able to verbalize that. "I don't know how that man sorted green," he said when he'd swallowed. "Do you think he thinks?"

"Why, I couldn't say," she said, beatifically innocent with a hint of sympathy. "On pure ruthlessness, I suppose. Is there some trouble?"

"The amount of trouble he's gotten Spike into is possibly unquantifiable," he answered morosely, restraining the juvenile impulse to shred a second sandwich and stab it with a fork.

"That sounds serious," she said, with a little frown, moving another sandwich to his plate. "Try the prawns, do; Melly's done something rather amusing with them."

"Of course, it's a purely personal matter," he said, with the special inflection that drew attention to her white, unmarked forearms.

He himself had been saved from having the Mark put somewhere easily revealed by a prior tattoo. Their Lord hadn't been especially pleased to learn that keeping the twined pair of windswept trees with the hearth burning green and silver-black at their center was a dealbreaker for him, and Evan's father hadn't been, either. He had pointed out, though, that he was a _painter,_ and the odds of a very intricate burn-looking thing on his forearm going unremarked were fairly puny, it was amazing Dad had managed. _Two_ of them never rolling up their sleeves was going to stop looking like a merely personal eccentricity and start looking like Something Else.

He'd offered the sole of his foot instead, and tried not to look like he'd noticed Voldemort deciding whether to wish he'd thought of that earlier. Or to look relieved when the Dark Lord had visibly decided no, he didn't want his followers feeling they were _desperate_ to hide the Mark. It was supposed to feel like a privilege, not a brand. Even if it had bloody well felt like one, and did again every time they were summoned. Ev tried not to be too annoyed with Dad for wanting that for him. It got harder every time he saw Spike and Reggie's arms twitch.

So he and Spike could still go to the beach when Ev could drag him. Not even strangers found it too terribly odd when Spike went about in shirtsleeves or even his frock coat at technically-inappropriate times. He was just that kind of person, always had been. People would walk off thinking he'd been wearing a waistcoat even when it had actually been a dressing gown or jumper.

"Then, by all means, don't tell me the details!" she said with a casual laugh, eyes narrowing in focus.

"No indeed. Only, it seems that your brother-in-law's brought Severus to the notice of one of Luke's richer and more quick-tempered friends. He thinks Severus can do him a favor. And you know Spike, ask him to do something and he goes over all hard-done-by and grumpy and gratified and won't stop till it's done if it kills him—"

Narcissa sighed, lifting her eyes to the ceiling with a flat expression. This wasn't (only) plausible-deniability code for 'he can't refuse the Dark Lord.' It was literally true. Madam Pomfrey had actually had to hold Slughorn up at wandpoint during their NEWT year to make him stop urging Severus to switch out of the Quidditch team's reserve rota for games.

Even then Evan had had to enlist Reggie's sad-puppy eyes and pleas for extra tutoring to keep Severus from playing. That had cost him, as handing Spike a pot of red ink turned him into a slavering, bloodthirsty grammar-basilisk with no impulse control. Regulus, understandably, did not, thank you, want any more Sodding Snape Commentary(TM) than he absolutely needed.

And even _that_ hadn't been done it. Evan had had to make that thick arse Avery realize he was running out of chances to win glory on the pitch and get threateningly possessive over them, too, before Severus stopped being jittery over was-he-contributing-enough.

"But this isn't in his line," Evan went on. "Frankly, coz, neither of us is sure he can manage it."

"Heavens," she said, not sounding flighty at all for a moment. "Then I shall have to have a word with Lucius. Those healers at St. Mungo's are all such rot, you know," she added, lightly again. "And patronizing? My _dear_! Quite impossible. I can't have anything interfering with my regimen."

"I knew you'd want to know," Evan agreed. It was a good thing he was sitting down, or his knees might have wobbled in relief. "I think Spike might kill Lestrange himself if he had to start _again_ with you, although he does have a soft spot for the fellow." He took a bite of sandwich, and his eyebrows lifted. "My compliments to Melly; this is quite as good as you promised."

"Opposites attracting, I suppose," Narcissa mused, with a smile over the prawns. She took a sandwich herself. "Incidentally, darling, I wish you'd stop calling Lucius by that dreadful, common nickname. It upsets him so." Impish, she clearly wished no such thing. Narcissa was fortunate enough to be fond of her husband, but she wasn't blind to his _nouveau riche_ overcompensation. Nor had she given up hope that enough gentle teasing by staunch allies would convince him to relax.

This was optimistic of her: the Malfoys had been 'new money' for almost as long as the Blacks had been universally acknowledged nobility. Even in the wizarding world, that could have been more than long enough. They nevertheless remained, somehow, not quite quite.

"How unforgivably uncouth of me," he mourned, lifting the back of his hand to his forehead. When they'd both successfully swallowed their giggles very nearly like grownups, he asked, "Would you like to see the portrait? One more sitting, I think, and it'll be all done bar the last charms."

"To tell you the truth," she admitted, dimpling in a demure suggestion of the called-for embarrassment she in no way felt, "I'm getting to the point of not wanting to take one little step more than necessary. It must sound dreadfully lazy, but…"

"If you can stomach it," he offered cheerfully, "I might ask my neighbors what they did when they were as far along as you. You never know, the Sprout might share out tips among her Sett, and it would give them so much pleasure to think they might be of help to you."

"I daresay it would," the youngest Rosier-Black daughter said, tapping her impeccably formed lips thoughtfully with one smooth, oval nail, only a shadow of cynicism in her voice. No varnish, paints, or sparkly charms for Narcissa, only a perfect, glassy shine. "How kind they sound. Let me see… Amelia Bones and Susan Fudge, aren't they?" He nodded, and she smiled. "Ask them by all means, darling. And I'll have them to tea in a week or so to thank them for their indispensable advice."

"Useful or otherwise," he observed, leaning back in amusement and taking another little sandwich. This one turned out to be cucumber with herbed re'em butter, a particular favorite of his. Severus insisted that re'em dairy was sour as bad milk and made the flat smell like mold. Severus had freakish stillroom-honed senses that normal people did not understand. Only the sense-memory of Linky's wooden spoon on his knuckles kept Evan from snaffling the lot while he could.

"Good intentions are received as treasures whatever comes of them," Narcissa declared, leaving unspoken the obvious codicil: _Hufflepuffs assume._


	6. Undisclosed

The Dark Lord must choose whether to kill young Snape as a probable liability or use the living crap out of him. He'll decide as soon as he stops headdesking.

* * *

**warnings** for casual torture (barely worth mentioning by DE standards. Do I need to warn for this kind of thing going forward? What do you think?) and creepy possessive language.

**Notes: **It looks like at least one or two of you have, at least so far, been reading both the platonic and wholehearted (I'd say agape but that would be using a controversial definition of the word, not the best known/most often used one) versions of this story. I didn't expect that and it absolutely melts me. (hearts)

Well, the least I can do is not waste your time. Not all chapters will be affected, so I'll be labeling the ones that will with a (d) for 'delta' or 'different,' because ffnet won't let me use an asterix (or any other symbols) in the chapter titles, mutter mutter expletive growl. Will go back and do the earlier ones later on. I'm not going to try and do a complex labeling system for slightly vs very different, though, because that would drive me mad, MAD, **MAD** I tell you! (cough)

Putting this note in both versions seems ironically redundant under the circumstances, but Slytherin under Severus does believe in redundancy in its backup plans... and this isn't a chapter with a difference, so there's only one document. ;)

* * *

Undisclosed

"You approve of the sandwiches?" the Dark Lord inquired, dangerously bland.

"I wouldn't presume to approve, my Lord," Severus said, hoping he wouldn't _too_ much regret the flicker of enjoyment he evidently hadn't been able to keep out of his eyes. "Rather, I _notice_ that it's a ploughman's lunch. And I'm quite ready to work."

"Are you?" his master mused. "And yet, I've been peppered by hints from young Malfoy that you aren't up to any new responsibilities."

Severus's eyebrows drew together and winged up at the ends in surprised annoyance. "If my Lord is listening to his hints," he said, "then it must be his business, although I can't see how."

"You claim not to have set him about it?"

"Certainly not knowingly or purposefully, my Lord," Severus replied. He hadn't, in fact, even seen Luke since the bonfire, but only fools volunteered information. This was not company in which it was safe to be foolish. He might need to make an implication later on.

"Then tell me," the Dark Lord invited, stroking his snake's nose gently, "how it came to be that I have been annoyed about you."

Fortunately (for a given definition of fortunate), Severus had started practicing to keep fear out of his face years before he'd ever seen a train. "If I must speculate," he answered, "well… I have been worried I won't be able to manage what you might ask of me, my Lord. It's been weighing on my mind, and I shouldn't be surprised if my friends _have_ noticed."

The sharp, dark eyes pierced into him. He didn't bother trying to shove anything down to the bottom of his mind, as he'd had nothing to look suspicious about when it started. Unfortunately, his brewer's senses betrayed him, and he thought absently, _Cider-colored eyes, but made with molasses. Too much molasses, actually; on the reddish side._ —_Oh, **hell,** did I say that out **loud**?!_

When he had his breath back and could think and stand again, Voldemort asked him, incredulous, "Are you actively suicidal, boy?"

"Er," he said, his head all swimmy with the rush of pain gone away. "No? I just notice things, honestly, sir, it just happens."

"Now I understand your friends' concern," the Dark Lord said, pinching the bridge of his patrician nose. "But impertinent observations aside, if you ever second-guess me again, young Snape, a crucio will be the least of it."

"Well, I'm not suicidal, my Lord," Severus told him, still gloomy-drunk with endorphins, "but if that's the case I suppose you'd better kill me now and have done. I don't think I can help thinking about things. Or how they could go wrong. It just _happens,_" he repeated, staring at the ground and fully expecting to be hexed into it again.

"You've already given yourself to me," the Dark Lord pointed out, with the mix of disbelief faintly tinged with entertainment and despair that Severus got from… almost everyone who didn't loathe him, actually. Regularly. "Suppose you do me the honor of trusting me, and my judgment?"

Severus stared at him, and blurted, "What do you—oh," he finished thoughtfully. He stared at the ground some more, pulling himself into a cross-legged position and frowning.

Eventually, he looked up at his master and said, "Yes, I see, sir. I'm sorry. But, that is, I see what you mean, but I can't understand what _you_ see that would make you think—I mean, my Lord, er…" His mouth screwed up despondently as the muscles in his left leg trilled like harpstrings, "My Lord, I had to fight the Hat to get into Slytherin, and I really do try, sir, but there are things I can't _do_. Like, er, subtle. My Lord, how can someone who can't reliably manage subtle be a spy? I'll try whatever you want me to," he promised, meeting his master's eyes earnestly, "as hard as I can, but I just don't see how."

"But I do," Voldemort told him. Severus sighed, and bent his head in acquiescence, gloomily thinking, _Dying because one's friends' relatives are fanatics seems such a waste_. The Dark Lord patted his arm. "On your feet, my soldier, and eat of my table," he ordered.

"Yes, my Lord," Severus answered. "May I take an anticonvulsant? This," he gestured at the bit of him currently twitching (his cheek), "might be distracting." Permission obtained, he pulled a vial from some pocket and drank from it as he sat, chasing it with a bite of raw onion.

"Some people would put that in the sandwich," the Dark Lord mentioned, bemused, taking the other seat. The sun glinted off the beginnings of silver at his temples, and the snake coiled comfortably about his shoulders.

Severus tentatively crooked a bit of a smile at him (_push your luck, push your luck, if you're not afraid if him you must not have a reason to be)_, and replied, "I like uncooked simples, sir. You know you're eating them; you can taste what makes them potent."

"And they're harder to poison?" Voldemort proposed, a bit silky.

"Not impossible, though," Severus said thoughtfully, tapping the apple laid out for him with his wand, so that it fell into slices. "It's said by some that Augustus Caesar died of figs poisoned on the tree." He ate a slice and offered the plate to his master.

Voldemort ate one solemnly, and watched his man carefully for signs of relief. He didn't see any, and commented on it. Severus shrugged, and replied, "It's only useful to be roundabout about killing if the intended victim is hard to access, or if their death will make trouble for the killer. If my Lord needs to kill one or curse one of his own, there are no such obstacles. Whereas there are such things as preventative antidotes."

"Practical. Suppose you apply that practicality to my purpose."

Severus blinked at him. "Of course," he said, and his tone said _of course,_ too. "How?"

"Your humility does you credit, Severus," Voldemort said, not unkindly, "And I imagine it's been of use to you, moving among the… wealthy as you do." A very familiar flash of class resentment in the dark eyes, quickly buried, made him smile. "Are you confident of your mind?"

"Largely," Severus said warily. "With limitations. And," he frowned, seeking the right word and settling on, "fluctations."

"And it's a wise man who knows them," he said, flicking his fingers dismissively. "Tell me, my own, if I were to ask it of you, how would you kill, say," who had the boy's tormentor at school been? That Gryffie oaf Charlie Potter's son, taking after his Black mama. Dear Dorea, so swift on the pitch, obliging in the greenhouses, and disdainful in the halls, whose dubious charms and holier-than-thou public repudiations had driven Anthea Mulciber very nearly off the Astronomy Tower. It had taken Tom's whole circle to pull her out of it, and had been _unrelentingly _tedious. Her loyalty was just as unrelenting, though, as was her wife's, and their son's. These things did pay off.

Yes, Charlie's boy was the one. Bella had been most conflicted about the feud. Her cousins, close and distant, going after the uppity mudblood who had his claws in her baby sister and favorite little pet cousin together should have been cause for celebration. Only she couldn't cheer them on or be encouraged, because they said they were doing it for House and blood-treacherous reasons, said it was because their target was on _her_ side. He finished, "The young Mr. Potter?"

"With my fucking _teeth_," Severus snarled immediately, and instantly clapped his hands over his mouth, meeting the Dark Lord's gaze with wide, apprehensive eyes.

Voldemort laughed: a full rich laugh, if on the high side for a man. "Fluctuations," he echoed. "I see. And if I asked you to do it more circumspectly than that?" He watched Severus think about it.

"In this scenario," his man asked, "ought he to be the only death?"

"In any scenario I put to you," the Dark Lord told him, "unless I tell you otherwise, assume that I want precision work, and to be able to use my knife again."

Severus nodded, just plainly, making Voldemort still his face to keep from staring. No relief, no gratitude or thrill at an assumption that he was being favored, no suspicious or anxious _but would I be allowed to spare myself if the mission weren't hypothetical _look that tried to divine his intentions, just a thinking nod, and a thinking frown as Severus drummed his fingers on the table for a moment.

The young Snape's muddled bloodline, allies, and OWL scores had, as a package, attracted the Dark Lord's attention, and since then he'd been hearing _mad, odd, hard to read, runs hot and not just cold but glacial. _It had all rung in his ears like the echoes of stupid, drunken muggles twice the size he'd been then, led him to welcome what had seemed at the Marking ceremony like a cool and pragmatic, if sardonic and indifferent, mind into his ranks. A hostage for the even more indifferent Rosier heir, he'd thought, would be welcome, as would a potion-maker of Snape's skill and, more, potential. The apprenticeship he'd taken on had been a bonus. Although working purebloods around to the idea of courting nonhuman allies was going to take (was taking) some work, the way the Ministry treated everyone but wizards was _such_ an opportunity. The werewolves in particular, he was sure, needed only a taste of pride to pull themselves out of omega-mind and get angry.

And yet he was beginning to think there was something to those rumors—and yet again, he found himself believing that nod, which meant any madness here could probably be turned to his purpose. As he looked at his man, Severus was thinking only of the task he was set. Voldemort could see his eyes, and, knowing, didn't need belief.

"He's sociable," Severus said slowly, after drumming out quite a bit of what the Dark Lord recognized after a while, rather pained, as _Die Forelle_. "And loud. I mean, he's very good at drawing attention when he wants to. In-person encounters would be ill-advised. He's not alone often except when he's stalking me, and attacking him then would make my involvement obviously probable. There are people I'm certain he tells when he's doing it." He looked up at his master and said, "I'd have to say his point of greatest vulnerability is his hair."

"Explain."

"He runs his hands through it a lot," Severus explained, all dispassion except for the faintest curl to his lip. "Disarranges it. And he's not the sort of person to think about less than obvious threats, or to suppose himself vulnerable enough to have need of being chronically armored. I suspect he leaves a positive trail of follicles, and that a simple _accio_ would provide one with ample material for polyjuice or sympathetic magic. If he has had the sense to guard himself, well, he has Quidditch instincts. Played Chaser, and Seeker for longer. More likely to catch than duck, especially something Snitch-like."

"You wouldn't get to him through his wife? He must be alone with her at times."

"_I_ wouldn't," Severus said, a certain wryness about his expression revealing that he wasn't blind to how loaded this question was, and didn't hope Voldemort was. "A possibility, if he takes more precautions than I suspect. But it wouldn't be my inclination; it would be riskier."

"How so?"

He shrugged. "Any number of reasons, but primarily: simple is best. The fewer human, animal, and weather-dependent factors in an operation, the more likely it is to go according to plan."

"A person under imperio isn't unpredictable," Voldemort mentioned, stroking his pet snake again.

"Imperio isn't infallible," Severus said. "Aurors know how to build up any natural ability to resist a person might have, and they have friends that are Aurors. Evans—that is, Miss Evans as was—has always been thoroughly pigheaded and single-minded, my Lord. She's the last person I'd count on to go under, after Geoff Goyle. Tunnel vision. Implacable. More and more immune to reason and persuasion as she got older, and she never had enough sense to understand that threats might be anything more powerful than displays of bad taste."

"Surely not."

"I know," Severus agreed with a hopeless helplessness. "Courage is one thing, but one wouldn't think actual intrepidity a trait likely to survive long enough to breed inheritors."

"Mm." He regarded his man for another long moment, heavy-lidded. The girl sounded very like Bellatrix; Voldemort would remember her name. "And the old fool?"

"My lord?"

"Dumbledore, Severus. How would you kill him?"

There was another, much longer silence. Finally, Severus asked dubiously, "And we're still operating under the mission parameters of 'you don't get your knife broken,' my Lord?"

"Did I say otherwise?"

"Er… then… no idea. Sorry, my Lord; I don't think it could be done."

"A decrepit piece of senility like that," Voldemort said softly, drawing his wand, "And you 'don't think it could be done.'"

Severus swallowed convulsively, but met his eyes, solid. "You're testing my determination to face you with the truth, my Lord, when you imply that a wizard of his experience and resource, who acts dotty if not senile but even so hasn't been removed from any of his several very responsible positions, should be treated lightly. Surely."

Voldemort advanced on him, watching with pleasure as the thin throat tightened, its muscles jumping, as the eyes widened in apprehension but never flinched from his. He put his hands on his man's shoulders, gently, and washed up the quivering throat until he was cupping the tense, blank face in his long fingers. "Severus," he said quietly. "Severus. Severus, needle eye, glaive tongue, Severus my own, do you see now how well I can use you?"

The dark eyes flashed up at him, and for a moment there was nothing between them but the warm certainty of willing feudalism. The Dark Lord basked in it. Then Severus's eyes clouded again, and he started, "But—"

"Salazar on a _staff_," Voldemort snarled in disgust, and cursed the young idiot back down into the ground. When he lifted the pain, his man collapsed onto his back, white and sweating, head tilted back slackly with the long, hollow line of his throat completely exposed.

To his amazement, the boy was _laughing,_ grinning loopily up at him, black eyes sparkling with conspiratorial and uncomplicated pleasure.

If any of his aristocratic servants had been there to see, Lord Voldemort might have chased all understanding from his face. He would have been mortified (read: judiciously homicidal as a prevention against the spreading of rumors) if any of them had realized what it meant.

Tom Riddle, too, had grown up calloused and scarred as a hard-mouthed horse under the rod of filthy, insignificant fools who could never hope to understand him, and then put on the silver-green. He hadn't, it turned out, quite forgotten the blinding, heady joy of being punished for not holding his head high enough.

The still-mostly-a-man who'd been that smarting, chafing, seething, charming boy smiled indulgently, and sternly commanded, "The next time I summon you, my lad, you _will_ be 'quite ready to work.'"

"My Lord," his greenest sapling agreed, low and certain, shining limply up at him with afterglow eyes.

Not one to waste an opportunity, Voldemort slid through them into his mind again, just enough to resonate all through him. "Now, let us address your fears, my own. It's said that ill-speaking is no guarantor of honesty, but it needed saying because it's so poorly understood. And so, Severus, this is the way you will slither in…"

* * *

St. Augustine meant the unfinished/unpracticed/poorly-crafted meaning of rude when he said (AD 397) a thing is not "necessarily true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because crafted magnificently." In Murder Must Advertise (1933), however, Dorothy Sayers had her detective credit him with being the only man who's ever seen through rudeness. I will leave it to you which of them a prig like Riddle who grew up in a poor and quite possibly religious '50s orphanage was forced to read and probably copy lines out of as a child... but our antihero is a budding _master_ of spin. ;)

Schubert's _Die Forelle_ is a song about happy, carefree trouts who allow themselves to get caught by a clever, coldblooded fisherman even though the water is clear and they're faster than he is. The narrator is sad and angry for them and, in an often-omitted verse, warns young maidens not to be that dumb about boys just because youth makes them feel powerful.

Yes, a basic creative writing rule was borked in this chapter. Tom's fault. He's grabby as well as a creeper. Will not be a regular thing.


	7. Dye Urn Alley (d)

Worried about the divisive effect of having to keep the Dark Lord's secrets in the future, Severus wants to be sure he's carrying his own weight with his friends. Worried Spike's pumpkin juice has been cut with the bad drugs, Evan wants to try cognitive recalibration.

* * *

**Warnings:** Insecurity. Sleepy, cranky, purple-tinted... not prose, I don't even know, Ev's a bit of a... Look, purebloods with the drama. He doesn't have a snake cane, if that helps.

Also, this is probably about the level of graphic we will top out at. Frankly, it only got this far because I felt last-minute guilty the other chapter had to be so much longer because of backstory (and notes). But since I've pretty much proven I have no idea what's going to happen during night-before or last-minute edits ever, I guess I'd better not promise. :\

* * *

#18 Dye-Urn Alley #18

"You look tired," Evan frowned. "Meeting go all right?" He was delighted, if not enlightened, when Severus answered him only with an erumpent tackle.

Later:

"Ev?"

"Mmmmm?"

"Don't try to manipulate the hypersensitive megalomaniac anymore, will you?"

"…Eh?"

"Or at least don't use the Platinum Peacock."

"…Ah. Point."

"Ta." Rustling. "'Night, thorn."

"'Night, heart."

"That's right, you _should_ be sorry. …Are you—are you laughing at me?! You are! You bastard! I got it right in the teeth and you're laughing at me! Evvvannnnnnnnn!"

"Oi, Spike?"

"Haaaaate yoooooouuuu…."

"Light of my socks, nutmeg in my coffee, emerald of my cheese board, blackberry in my tea?"

"Good god. What."

"Do you know what time it is, if my NEWT in astronomy doesn't grossly mislead me?"

"Hmm. Could you mean Go To Sleep You Sodding Ungrateful Whinger AM?"

"Spot on, Class Act."

"…Actually, nutmeg in the coffee might be interesting."

"…O Hallowed Death, take me now."

"Ev?"

"Mm?"

"He's not here."

"…Who isn't?"

"Death."

"Oh? S'pose you'd better fill in, then."

"…Ev?"

"In your own time, maestro."

"Are we still partners?"

Evan shot bolt upright, and so did his eyebrows. "What kind of question is that?" he demanded, his lazy, cozy anticipation shattered.

"I…" Severus wasn't meeting his eyes. "There may be things I'm not allowed to talk about, going forward, and…" He smiled humorlessly. "I don't know what you need me for, now we're out of school, that you couldn't get from an elf and an accountant."

"I cannot possibly be hearing this," Evan explained to himself out loud, voice flat with disbelief. "It's hallucinations brought on by _lack of sleep_."

"I don't think you _should_ have done it," Severus said, ignoring him. "Set a flea in his ear, however you did it. But it was easy for you, wasn't it? No trouble. I wouldn't have dared if I'd known where to start, and that's nothing new, but you hardly need someone to chivvy firsties back to bed for you, these days, or any tutoring, or help with menacing morons who won't hear a word to the wise, and I—"

"Severus Octavian Seth Prince-Snape," Evan clipped out, voice frozen with fury, "you are _not_ getting one over again tonight—"

"That was your idea."

"—and if I ever hear such utter rot from you again, you'll wish I'd stopped at slapping you down—or up, sidewise, or perpendicular. Did he curse you stupid? You raise my hands this instant."

He glared until his hesitating flatmate gave in, raised his eyes heavenward, indulgently, and lifted the potion-stained appendages Severus knew perfectly well he meant. "Do you think you get to take them back just because I don't have a project on right this very moment? I don't remember saying I was done with them; did I say anything remotely like that?"

"S'pose not," Severus admitted, with a grave, almost wistful look. It would have translated to something revoltingly soppy on another face. He added, with a little more of the gleam Evan liked to see, "You're far too lazy."

"I'm sorry, it can't possibly be that you were trying to talk from over all the way over there," he stormed on, with a cutting gesture. "Do you need to be reminded where your voice lives?"

With a somber expression that was very nearly a smile, Severus leaned over and dropped a soft, certain kiss at the hollow of Evan's throat.

"Are we still partners," he repeated scathingly, dripping mockery. His hand (one of the broader, paint-stained ones, not one of the brewing-strengthened set with the long, tapering, knuckley fingers) clenched convulsively, possessively, in the hair at the nape of the idiot's neck, so fine it hung limp even at summer's most humid.

No one else, now they were out of the Slytherin dorms, ever got to see the unpleasant sheen of Spike's splash-fume-and-hex shield washed off bone china skin and inked-silk hair at the end of his brewing day. After all, he even ran back to the stillroom after night parties. Knew he was going to. Planned to. Who did he think would paint him his proper puppyishly swotty instead of brazenly offensive if Evan didn't do it? No one, that's who_. _

And who would keep Evan from drifting off to sleep and dying of numb boredom without a tempest settled cozily in his lap to shield and stir him? Bella if anyone, and dying of numb boredom would be preferable to her kind of excitement.

But you couldn't tell Spike the things he did for you weren't the things he did for you on purpose, weren't the things that cost him anything, or that he had to think about. That wasn't something he could take in, even when you both knew the reverse was true. Even if having things done for him on purpose actually upset him. Even if, like Evan, you wore his very own words on your arm, an image inked in tiny runes like brushstrokes, so that neither of you could be in danger of forgetting you were _the still place, the balance, the hearth_. He'd think you were making fun of him, and the harder you tried to make him believe you meant it, the less good-humored his disbelief would become.

Even so. Even considering his idiot himness.

_Were they still partners_. "Unbesoddinglievable."

"_Verzeihung bitte, Herr Schwartzrosiger_," Severus apologized with deep (and deeply insincere) formality into Evan's collarbones. A tiny smile tugged just at the corners of his eyes when he raised his head. He laid himself flat with an arm out: a clear invitation for Evan to pound him like the lumpy pillow he was before settling down on him for the night.

Opting for Latin, Evan simmered, "_Asine,_" and took him up on the unspoken offer with enough force to make sure his _dunderkopf _wouldn't forget the lesson all _week._ And also with a cushioning charm, because why should Ev suffer?

He felt much calmer in the morning. Especially since, for a wonder, one strong hand was still curled over his back and another warm at his nape, even though the sunlight was already glowing blue through their innermost curtains. All told, he considered, he'd handled that particular little unjustified panic attack very well. There wasn't even any crockery to reparo this time, and he'd only said no-more to last night, hadn't made any announcements about what Severus could or couldn't expect in the morning.

And he'd made quite a point of how Severus's hands were his to do as he liked with, hadn't he? Which Severus hadn't argued with him about, so he really _had_ to underline and secure his position before Severus woke up and had some coffee and got unmuzzy and truculent. Stir while the cauldron's hot and all. It wasn't particularly that he'd been cursing himself for cutting off the possibility of sucking Spike's fingers ever since he'd done it. It was purely a matter of tactics. He had to cement his point, unless he wanted to lose the high ground, by doing exactly what he wanted to with _his own_ hands and make _his own_ voice do what he wanted it to before Spike was awake to have a say in the matter.

Right.

Spike was careful not to let his hands get calloused because he needed sensitivity for temperatures and for measuring ingredient mass and quality. Or at least that was his excuse, and Evan wasn't calling him on it. Not when it meant he went as mad over a mouth on them as most witches did over their breasts (in Ev's not-inconsiderable experience), not the way Ev felt about them.

He blinked. He was quite sure the bed, and Severus, had both been under his front a second ago. Now one of those hands was splayed lightly over his throat, not threatening, just warm, one finger tapping lightly. "My voice, I believe you said?" Severus inquired mildly from somewhere near his chin, dark and a bit raspy with sleep, like black volcanic sand at the side of a hot spring.

"Now you're getting it," Evan agreed happily, and snuggled into back the pillows to be used.

Still, it was an object lesson in speak-of-the-devil. Hadn't he let his thoughts stray to this very potential disaster only last week? Are we still partners, full and equal allies? Are you carrying me? Unacceptable. Clearly he should leave the pessimism and catastrophe-preparation to Spike, who you couldn't stop being braced for _absolutely everything all the time_ even with tranquilizing potions and a foot rub. Not even the universe could arrange for that many devils to come when called.

And Evan knew exactly why that was, didn't he.

* * *

**Next:** Eileen fends off a moderately domesticated viper, and Lily attempts to ride herd on a stag in full trumpet (it may not be what _they_ do, but it's what _he's_ doing).

_Verzeihung bitte, Herr Schwartzrosiger_: Please forgive me, Mr. Black-Rosier (Black-Pinker might also be right)  
_Asine_: Ass. The four-legged kind.  
_Dunderkopf_: Foam/yeast-for-brains/dregs-head. Dunder being a Thing in rum-making. It's foamy and yeasty and is used in the process but is also a by-product of an earlier step, and can be used as fertilizer.

Apparently it also may, in Northern England, be a fluffy _textile_ product. Which is one more data point in favor of Spinner's Row being in a (failing) mill town around there. I want to spin idle speculations about whether the cotton fluff was named for the rum foam, but they'd just be that. I can say for sure, though, that Severus knows both meanings of the both word, Evan vaguely suspects it means something like sound-and-fury (thunder, see?), and I'm just relieved Professor Snape wasn't calling his students something more organically rude.

Re 'thorn': Evan's last name leaves him with exactly two thematic choices unless he decides he's interesting enough to use his imagination on (unlikely). Also, there's this family spell, see _A Key Called Promise_, ch 8. Preferably on Archive of Our Own, because the prose without the picture doesn't really... well, it just doesn't, really.


	8. Spinner's End

A brief interlude in which Eileen fends off a moderately-domesticated pit viper.

* * *

Meta/interactive notes may be temporary, on account of I've gone back to old stories and not had the faintest idea what the notes were about, so readers definitely wouldn't. If I don't think it illuminates the story, it probably won't stay past the next posting. This note (not the ones below) will be moved to the next-posted new chapter. I'm just putting it here for now in case any strange person is pantingly curious about what happened to the note that explained the prompt for the following notes.

(With that many notes in one breath, Siri could name that tune.)

**Time:** _This story was written before the prequels_. I've said that in prequel notes, but now you may see more why it matters. Key and Wicket were written for two reasons. First, Evan was kind of two-dimensionally foppish here and I needed to get into his head (the void looks back into yooooouuuuu).

Second, there were enormous parenthetical blocks of backstory interfering with the flow. I thought maybe they could have their own home. Then most of them stayed regardless, because the prequel (taken as a whole) got NANO-length. While I _hope_ people will read it/them anyway, Valley should be _capable_ of standing on its own. Is it? I don't know. It tries.

So, yes, there is some redundancy. Occupational hazard of sequels. If those who'll recognize it when you see it could be patient with that, knowing it's there so newcomers aren't lost (and because I, er, really do not assume people memorize my very long fluff!), it would be graceful and appreciated.

**Structure**: I know those of you who have read them are used to longer, denser chapters from me, where a lot happens at once. Or seems to, because one chapter can cover weeks at a time and dorm life feels that way compared to postgrad. They were intensely located: one place, one mind. This one isn't like that. It's ensemble, or at least much closer to it. You get a broader view. Also a slower build, with some getting-to-know-you. I realize getting to know Ev and Spike is, for old hands, old hat, but, again, see above.

* * *

Spinner's End, Nelson, Lancashire  


"Be off with you," Eileen said crossly to the beautiful boy on her doorstep, folding her arms.

"I just want a word with your husband, ma'am, mayn't I wait for him?" Rosier cajoled, giving her a very accomplished set of puppy eyes.

"Circe," she cursed in disgust, "what's the boy done now?"

"He's being a flailing jackass with all the self-esteem of a salted flobberworm. Again," her son's pet viper told her baldly, his dreamy blue eyes almost hard for a moment before he coaxed, "Won't you let me thank the source?"

"You can't come round here every time Severus has one of his nervy fits," she said, eying him with impatient disfavor and tightening her arms.

He blinked at her ingenuously, asking, "Whyever not?"

Because the visits reminded Toby that magic existed, and of everything he blamed on lacking the power of his wife's birthright. And then he'd brood over everything about his son he couldn't bear to (or just couldn't) tell the other parochial, poverty-stricken pub-crawlers about. The wand, and the 'effeminate' long hair and bookishness and poncy posh research job and, most of all, the conspicuous lack of wife or girlfriend.

People unhappy with their lives could always be trusted to find something perfectly normal to decide was dreadful and look down on. Muggles without money were so helpless, they were the worst of the lot, she'd found, and the strictest with their own. The rich ones, at least, could call nearly anything an eccentricity and get away with it.

So he'd brood and simmer and fume, and then he'd go out and get as drunk and ham-fisted as he'd used to when Severus had been living at home. It had gotten so bad she'd never replaced her wand after Toby'd burned it; better to take the cauldron off the heat than be forever flicking cooling charms at it. And where would this fine young fellow be, with his brocaded waistcoat and red-gold curls, once he'd jabbed hot pins into her man's brain and sauntered off?

"Because it's a nuisance, that's why not, and I won't be having with it."

Rosier sighed elaborately, and looked at her very sadly. She had the crawling feeling he'd followed her thoughts without even going into her head, which was bad enough when her own lad did it. "Oh, all right, then. Anything for peace, me. Only, let it _be_ peace. I should be so sorry to find there'd been any unpleasant notes or anything of that sort."

Not a flicker of the chill that slammed down Eileen's spine made to her face. "I'll keep it in mind if the old goat ever learns his letters," she said, briskly unfair. Toby was as bad about books as their boy was, in his own way and on the sly, but being rude about someone an angry person disliked was the fastest way to make them feel you were on the same side. "Now, shove off. I've a client coming, and I can't have a man loitering about."

Calling Lizzy Eccles from down the street a 'client' was stretching it a bit. She would come in distress, though, and leave with some tea or mead that would do her more good than even a muggle who knew herblore would expect. And in the next week or so she'd probably drop by with a box of 'extra' eggs or a pie that 'wasn't good enough for the company she'd planned it for' or some such. Close enough, then, and it was a word a Londoner would understand.

"Right you are," Rosier said amiably, touching a finger to an imaginary hat. "Do give my very best regards to Blunt Force Trauma Senior, won't you?"

"Not likely," Eileen snorted, and shut the door firmly in the lie of his angel's face.


	9. Harrow's, Londonderry

In which Lily attempts to ride herd on a prancing stag.

* * *

**Warnings** for fpreg, worse location-wordplay than Diagon Alley, and a complete lack of vitriol. Everyone in this story is an unreliable narrator (naif style) and sees the world, other people, and themselves from their own point of view. Yes, that was a necessary warning for this chapter; some readers will like the next chapter's take on these characters better.

**Notes**: My britpicker explained to me very carefully that British men are not allowed to be the hideous love children of Tony Stark and P.T. Barnum even if they're lunatic ex-Quidditch stars over the moon about having a baby on the way. At least, not in public. That is OOC for nationality. I'm not reminding you of her name here because she absolutely warned me and this chapter is totally not her fault in any way. I am stubborn like rocks about my muses. Not even like pigs. Like rocks. No budgie. No parakeet, either. It's toned down since she saw it, but, still...

...the only way I can write this story is if I just sit back and ask the muses, _Hey, X, what were you doing at this point?_ If I try to tell them what to do, I am sooooo sunk. vOv

So instead it's just Lily who's sunk. For example:

* * *

Harrow's of Londonderry

"James."

"Sunblossom!"

"James, I want you to listen very carefully."

"I shall treasure every word that falls from your pouting—no, wait, I don't mean pouting, let me think. Every word that shoots from your cupid's bow, how's that? No. Dreadful, that's what that is. I can do better, half a mo."

"JAMES CHARLES POTTER I DO NOT CARE WHAT COLOR THE CARPET IS, ALL RIGHT?"

"But this one has nifflers on it, and this one has snitches! Obviously the snitches are infinitely superior, but call this," he pointed disdainfully at the background, "sky-blue? _I_ don't. Queasy, that's what I call it. And what if it's a girl? She might think we only wanted a boy if we have a blue carpet, and get some sort of whatyoumaycallem, complication."

"Complex," Lily said wearily, sitting down on one of the many armchairs about the horrible place. "And how do I know? I'm developing one. That's how."

"Aha! Snog therapy time." James caroled, "Pay attention, everyone! I shall now, for actually not your amusement but no doubt you'll be delighted and edified anyway, snog my wife! It's going to be epic! Tickets at the register!"

"No, no, back off, girls," Lily countered his bounce with a sarcastic drawl, "he's taken." When they'd been younger, he would have shouted that as loudly as the words suggested, and she would have slapped or hexed him and gone off with someone else. Sometimes the miracle in growing up was how small the miracles needed to be to matter enormously.

"Awww, but Lily," he cajoled, leaning in with a fine disregard for the shoppers who'd been close enough to hear. Most of them resembled Lily in silhouette, more or less (and possibly more to the tune of triplets in one case, although that effect might have been sheer contrast with the witch's twigginess), and were about equally divided between giggly and disapproving. "It's our Special Day!"

"Which special day would this be, then?" she asked with mostly-morbid curiosity.

He shrugged carelessly, and suggested, "Thursday?"

"It's Wednesday."

"Oh. Wednesday, then! Sacred to Odin Allfather, who—"

"Was never such a noisy oik in public?"

"Probably not," James agreed, settling on the arm of the chair and flicking his wand lightly without taking it out of its bottomless sheath. The disapproving saleswizard who'd honed in on his abuse of the furniture blinked, stopped advancing, and went back to what he'd been doing. "He'd have been more the bloodshed and mayhem type, Lils. Count your blessings, you should."

She shook her head and leaned back against his broad chest, smiling a little. "Do you know what I'd like, James?"

"Tell me this instant!"

"I'd like to pick a damn carpet, go home, and place it in front of the crib, where you would be allowed to simper dotingly at it for a maximum of ninety seconds, but not to quote-unquote improve it in any way. Then I'd like to have a nice, quiet tea with you—"

James brightened, hoping she meant that in the we're-in-public code sort of way. It wasn't completely out of the question, if he started behaving himself to the point where she'd be pleased to get her hands on him for reasons other than strangulation. Lack of clarity about that sort of thing was, she found, a positively magical motivator.

"—and put in some work on the, you know, the shoe things, before supper."

"You want to help work on the shoe things?!" James exclaimed, an enormous grin taking over his face, like knotweed. "Lily! Seraphim! You're coming around! Wait till I tell Sirius!"

"Not _those_ shoe things," she said, rolling her eyes. "Dream on, Jamie. The next one of those I see is getting binned as a public safety hazard. What on earth do you want them for, anyway? I mean the ones for the Hit Wizard Office commission."

"You're so virtuous," he mourned, smiling. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "Positively sick-making. All right, then, petal; pick one and we're off."

"The green shaggy one that's all over ivy," she said at once, getting up and twining her arm through his. She didn't have her heart set on it particularly, and it wasn't even really much less dreadfully cutesy than the rest of them. However, it matched her eyes and at least the charms were realistic, and _she_ was capable of making a decision even when not under pressure. "With the rabbits. Really, sweetheart, by the time the baby knows what it's looking at and likes cuddly, shiny things, it'll be all worn out and time for a new one. We'll be in for it from Mum and your mother if it's not nursery-chic, but it ought to be something _we_ like."

"That's why I wanted the snitches," James explained, but he'd had the chosen carpet under his other arm by the time she'd finished talking. By now they were on their way to the cashier, the occasional long ear, twitchy nose, or cotton tail peeking out from the shaggy roll that matched her eyes, illusory vines twining over his arms.

She squeezed his arm, smiling, and diplomatically commiserated, "I know, love, but you were right: it was an _awful_ blue."

* * *

Also, yes, his father's name was Charlus. Charlus Potter, we understand, was relatively old when he was born—which could mean anything from 40 to 140, once we remember oh-maths and that potions exist. We can assume Charlus was nice to him, because he was one spoiled kid, and that he was raised to be a blood-traitor, because he showed unconflicted certainty about his beliefs, in contrast to Sirius's fraught rebellion. His middle name is Charles, I say, and won't raise eyebrows in either world.


	10. St Mungo's, London (d)

Narcissa tries to decide whether shaking or strangling Severus is more likely to make him stop cackling in righteous schadenfreude and start being helpful.

* * *

St. Mungo's, London

"Do I look as blown up as all that?" Narcissa asked. Sounding playfully mournful instead of homicidal was exceedingly difficult: every time the irritating man tried to say something, he dissolved into laughter again.

This time, probably because he had a very well-developed danger sense, Severus just about managed a, "N-not _you,_" before he folded up again, very nearly crying with it.

Narcissa sighed with emphasis, and said, "Severus, darling, I don't mean to be an imposition, but as you _will_ insist on doing this here, and we haven't long before you have to trot back to your little lab…"

Severus waved an apologetic hand and made a more concerted effort to pull himself together. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said, scrubbing at his eyes and trying to twitch his mouth back into place. "It's just, I saw Potter in the hallway, and…" he didn't quite dissolve again this time, but a few more body-shaking snickers overwhelmed him.

Alarmed, she drew herself up as straight as the beloved-but-inconvenient bulk rearranging her organs would allow, and pressed out furiously, "Severus Snape, you idiot, if you've let that insignificant worm provoke you, _in public in the hospital!_"

He waved a hand, still grinning like a wicked loon, and assured her "Innocent. I even managed to keep a straight face until he was out of sight."

Mollified, she settled back and remarked, "Gracious. Whatever has happened to the poor man?"

Her favorite hatchet crumpled into glee again, and he said, "There was—Belby wanted me to fetch a new crate of vials before I came to meet you, and when I came back, I saw Potter fixing these floppy things like white footprints in the doorway. So I ducked around the corner—"

"Vision-sharpening spell?" she asked.

Nodding, he said, "And a noise-catching mirror. It's always helpful, when defusing one of his charming surprises, if you can catch anything of the trigger spell." She nodded. She'd stood over his shoulder asking foolproofing questions while he'd developed the mirror charm in the summer before their sixth year, as she often had.

It still made her eyes nostrils flare hotly and Evan's smile turn chilly and worrying when they remembered the weeks of numb, hollow silence, and later the way his hands had shaken all the time, the way he'd choked and turned blind and white-eyed at the most random times and would bite his cheeks until they bled when asked questions. The fit they'd been afraid was a heart attack by the Three Broomsticks, near that horrible shack, the way he'd had to drug himself every day to get through the second half of his OWLs even with the House closing ranks around him. How telling it had been that he'd let them shield him, after years of refusing to be seen in public with anyone he liked, in case it made them targets.

Reggie had been even more in the dark than they were, poor pet. About the month of silence, at least; the appalling business by the beech tree afterwards had been outrageously public, not a secret at all. The silence, though, no one knew what that had been about, not even Evan. Along with everything else that had been going on in Reggie's unhappy house, it had driven him madder and madder until something over there had snapped. After that, his parents hadn't left their new heir any time to think of anything but his summer homework and family responsibilities.

On the other hand, Lucius had obviously quite enjoyed swooping in with a summer post and library and stable access and potions commissions and invitations for Severus to join his private dueling lessons. His suave-and-sophisticated-rescuer attitude had been entirely laughable, and he hadn't in any way succeeded in pulling a veil over the several things he'd wanted out of it.

And that had mattered. Narcissa had thought about that very hard, even after Bella started teasing her about frown lines.

But he'd genuinely wanted to help as well as to earn credit, and one of the things he'd been trying so hard to gain was Narcissa's good opinion. That mattered, too. And even if he'd been grandiose about it, he'd evaluated the target and the situation accurately. The measures he'd taken had been of significant help, both morale-related and practical, and impeccably timed. And that wasn't only a point in his favor, but a talent that was vanishingly rare.

And he did have such talented hands.

Now, Severus had covered his face with his own talented hand, black eyes shining at her from between his fingers in hapless delight. "And when he got up to leave, they, they, Narcissa, they popped up and turned into these big, hobnailed boots, and there was this sort of rubber-ball-and-chittering noise, and…"

Words failing him, he resorted to a series of expressive gestures. This time she joined him, giggling musically (if she did say so herself) behind her hand. Potter was a good-looking man, and he looked his best, in her opinion, hoist very high on his own petard with his own enchanted shoelaces.

"It was _beautiful," _he concluded blissfully. They basked together in the lovely, lovely thought of the strutting bastard trying to explain himself to draconic old Evangeline Vance in Spell Damage. She had no sense of humor at all. Furthermore, according to Lucius, she had some unspecified grudge against wizards, especially young ones, who were involved with witches. Vance was as likely as not to send him home to his self-righteous little chit of a wife, still bruised and chewed on all over (by _footless shoes!)_ and with a jarvey in his ear.

The ginger cow was, in Narcissa's opinion (which she was careful never to voice to Severus. He only pretended to be rational on the subject, poor dear), entirely useless as a human being. This might be explained by her filthy blood, but was not excused by it. It could at least be said for her, however, that she'd never once found Potter's malicious little pranks acceptable. Not even when she trying-to-be-secretly thought they were funny.

And she was nearly as far along as Narcissa, by all accounts. Even Narcissa would admit that the combination of hormonal upsets and physical discomfort could make a girl just a tiny, teeny little bit less serene than usual. If Vance sent the infantile bully home to a less than usually stable wife, still covered in the fallout of his vicious folly, just _imagine!_

"Well." Severus allowed himself one final, happy sigh before pulling his business face on. "How are you and the tadpole getting on?"

"I should quite like to hold him in my _arms,_" she said, with a plaintive smile. "Tomorrow, if at all possible. This very minute would also be acceptable."

"I imagine so," he said, with an expression that said he absolutely could not understand why witches wanted to put themselves through what she'd once overheard him calling Self-Induced Parasitic Distortion Hell.

But the lovely thing about Severus was that while he'd gag and make faces, make snide, awful comments, make no bones about how incomprehensible and odd he thought you were (talk about kettles and cauldrons!), none of it ever mattered in the least. Unless you took him seriously, took offense, and ruffled his sensitive little feathers, of course. But who was that oblivious (or bored)? And even then it wouldn't matter once the bludger hit the bat.

"I wish you'd let an actual healer take a look at you," he said, running his softly-glowing wand over her head and torso. He frowned at it, honing in on whatever information the color, luminosity, and wand-feel were giving him, but it was only a concentrating sort of frown. No cause for concern.

"You say that every time," she said fondly.

"I mean it every time," he retorted, even though they'd been exactly no help and he knew it. Her traitor body had rejected three attempts (it was easier to think of them as 'attempts') before he'd looked at her leaden attempt at a smile and hesitatingly offered to do a little reading-up.

The almost bruising euphoria of the first disgusting draught he'd pushed on her had made Lucius coax her into going into social seclusion for a few months. The second had given her obsessive addictions to sunlight and moonlight and the scents of loam and surf. Together, they made two birds easily stoned by long visits to the seaside and the raising-up of a hedge maze she was quite proud of. She was still taking them, but the odd effects had worn off several weeks ago.

Bizarre though Severus's treatments sometimes were, the baby had caught and this one had held on. Clearly, he was onto something so brilliantly twisted no one else could catch a glimpse of it without eating odd mushrooms and listening to fwooper cries. As usual.

He could fuss all he liked about midwifery not being his field and how important it was to meet for this near his lab, so he could take her down to the so-called experts if he found a problem. Narcissa knew the difference between quality and dross. She had no intention of wasting her time or risk her baby on Ministry-approved hacks just because they happened to have taken the particular medimagic classes (womblore and bedside manner) he happened to feel shaky in. He'd read everything they had by now, she was sure of it, and if he'd had access to a living teacher he would have been making fun of the poor thing by the third class.

"Still no side effects from the Devil's Bit preparation?"

"I don't think so," she said hesitatingly.

When Severus asked you a question like that, hesitation was fatal. It was almost certain to result in being exhaustively grilled for, at minimum, five or six tedious minutes. And when he was finally satisfied, naturally there were more questions.

In the end, though, he told her with reassuring callousness that she'd just have to live with the disturbing unpleasantnesses that had been intruding on her life. Like needing the toilet fifty times a day. Just like (according to both his research and his village-witch mother) _every other upright-walking female who'd ever attempted her insane experiment since there was such a thing as an upright-walking female. Er, possibly excepting birds. So just all the hairy ones._

"Severus Octavian Snape," she giggled, "I am no such thing!"

"You have more hair than I do."

"…That seems so unlikely, my dear _man._"

Heartened by his heartlessness and absurd tangents, she let him walk her back to the floo. On the way, she learned only a little more than she was interested to know about the precautions that wise (meaning paranoid) brewers took to avoid overheating and inadvisable particles clinging to the skin.

She was quite pleased about it, really; he was getting much better at filtering unnecessary and inappropriate details out of his chatty little impromptu lectures. And she now had lovely new imagery to share with Lucius and tease Evan about.

He shouldn't have escorted her, and possibly she shouldn't have allowed him. It would make him late—or rather, even later—getting back to Belby, she knew. He could be gallant like that, though, so long as no one embarrassed him by remarking on it, and would go surly if one did whether he was thanked or dissuaded. Besides, she had one indispensable duty to discharge before leaving him. It was one no friend would fail at.

The fire green with powder and her destination set, she turned to him mischievously, in the second before stepping through, and declared, "Boots!"

* * *

**eta [still 10/23]:** if it's now clear why they're meeting in the hospital, thank hwyla for asking.

**Happy holidays!**


	11. Still St Mungo's

Remus isn't even trying to get the Wolfsbane potion anymore, but he'll even be polite to Ol' Black(-Hole) Eyes if it might help him find a missing girl who hasn't even made it to her first full moon.

* * *

**Warning: **brooding over the lycanthropic oral fixation. Just brooding, though; all bitiness is in the past.

**Reminder:** the narrators know what they (think they) know and think what they think. Please consider the possibility that a given POV character might have been wrong, misinformed, or even lying before determining that it's the storyline/continuity that's inconsistent. Yes, I'm saying that now because Remus's lack of omniscience is varyingly glaring throughout.

**PSA**: Old notes referencing old comments and communications in old fics make me cross-eyed. Especially when the fics are _mine_ and I have no idea anymore what the comments were about. And when they're someone else's I tend to read them in case they have story-enhancing properties, which is usually a bit of a time-waster, and of _course_ everyone does exactly what I do and must be saved from _my_ perfectionism. ;) Still, I am imo overly-note-prone (see above re perfectionism), so notes that aren't about the story proper are unlikely to last beyond a chapter-post or two. I've actually already posted this announcement, but it was in a back-chapter to explain the disappearance of a particular note. Am putting it here again (and may exempt it from itself) because, well, not trying to sneak it in.

* * *

Still St. Mungo's

"Remus! Back again?"

"Back again, Raj," Remus agreed ruefully, shaking hands with his former senior-prefect. He noticed a new face about the lab. "Oh, hullo! You're… no, wait… it's Chang, isn't it? You were a year below me, I think?"

"Chang as was," Ranjit said, when the witch only dipped her head with a smile. "She's gone and married Dr. Strangelove."

"I don't remember seeing that in the Prophet!" Remus exclaimed. Mingyay, that was her name, he thought. Ravenclaw.

Mingyay dimpled at him absently, and said in a low, musical voice, "Phil won't have anything to do with the Prophet. It was in his own paper, of course."

"Oh, of course," Remus said, trying to look as if he read the thing or even remembered its name.

"Yes," Mingyay said. He had the distinct impression she was answering his ignorance rather than his words.

"Well, congratulations, Mrs. Lovegood," he said gamely. The woman had to be insane, choosing to marry Xenophilius and work with Snape. Anyone new at the Wolfsbane Project (awful name, but it was the key ingredient... and made some of the more sadistic bureaucrats happy) was a gift horse, though.

"Please, call me Ming," she replied.

"Well, if you're sure…"

"Quite sure, Mr. Lupin," Ming smiled. "No one with such a distinguished nose can say Míngyùe* at all well."

He fingered his unremarkable nose. He wouldn't have called it distinguished, but his entire face was positively Roman compared to the soft curves of her own. "I see," he smiled. "And I'm Remus. When did you start working here, Ming?"

"Oh, Mingaling's still got the shine on," Raj said, dropping a friendly arm around her shoulders.

"Ranjit makes terrible puns," Ming said gravely, to Remus's complete lack of comprehension. "But yes, it's so. Snape made me promise last year to find out whether I wanted to work here, once Phil and I were settled. It seemed like interesting work, and so I came."

"You know Snape?"

"He wants to read the old Chinese herbals," she said replied. "The Shennong Bencao and so on. When he first began to study the Asian runes, he needed someone nearer by to help him."

"You tutored _Snape?_" Remus asked, a little awestruck. As far as he knew, Snape had never been on the receiving end of the tutor's stick. Not even in Transfiguration (as far as Remus knew), where he'd always seemed to be working harder than he usually had to, to make things come right.

She smiled gently, and said, "Professor Slughorn introduced him to my grandmother, so of course he could not escape tea. I think it was a relief to him to have someone there to talk potions with. But what is your interest in the project, Remus?"

"Oh, well, er," Ranjit, bless the man, was starting to flounder for him when a deep voice drawled suddenly from _right _between his shoulders,_ Merlin,_ making him jump.

"An excellent question, Lovegood. Lupin, didn't I tell you last time if I ever caught you wheedling around here again I'd chase you out with a pitchfork?"

"I believe you did, Severus," Remus said mildly, pulling on his special, polite, talking-to-Snape face. He didn't point out that Snape hadn't specified that the pitchfork would be silver, and could therefore be assumed not to have meant it much. Ming wouldn't know about his curse already. Unless Snape changed his mind and let Remus into the project (ha), she wasn't going to. "But I wanted to speak to someone at the project on another matter."

Snape made a skeptical noise, but said curtly, "Fine. In my office."

Remus followed the lean back and its trail of woody, herbal scent into the depressingly familiar office. He wondered whether Snape _ever_ wore anything but wet-stone colors. Put the man up against the wall into Diagon, and he'd look like he was wearing Jamie's cloak with the hood down.

The office itself wasn't bad; all the rooms in St. Mungo's and the Ministry had airy enchanted windows on at least one wall, even if the other side of said wall was actually a broom cupboard. An expensive bit of magic, but anything to keep everyone at their desks. The walls were a pale, cloudlike blue that always made Remus feel swimmy, and there were some quite interesting illuminations on the wall in various languages, some of which he knew Snape spoke, or at least could read.

He hated it anyway. He must have been in here fifteen times, trying to persuade Snape to let him sign on to help test the potion. He knew they were still having problems with side effects, but he felt like a parasite and a coward, not being as much help as he could with something that was meant to help him.

But Snape kept listening to him reason and plead (or at least kept his eyes mostly open while he napped until Remus was done; hard to tell), and then fixing him an impatient glare and droning things like, "What were your NEWT scores, Lupin? Oh, you earned some? Get out." And "Describe your wand, Lupin. Yes, I thought you could, because you have one. What a nice resource for you. Goodbye." And, "Do you have a roof at night? A way of bathing and doing laundry that would allow you to show up at job interviews without reeking of unwashed werewolf? I see. The door is behind you." Most recently it had been, "Lupin, do—you—understand—words—spoken—in—English? How _delightful_ for you: you still have half a brain to fry. Stop badgering me or I'll take out a restraining order. With a pitchfork."

Remus supposed it was sort of sweet that the project was rejecting test subjects that weren't already sleeping under bridges and getting all their calories out of bottles, or living rough in some forest or other. It made him feel absolutely foul, though. More, although it might be self-centered, he couldn't quite get past the feeling that Snape was refusing him this, something that would make him safe to be out of his cage every month, largely out of spite.

He hadn't let his friends take him running since '76, when waking to silver-burns around his mouth had made him face the sheer enormity of the risks they'd been taking. It mattered for at least a week after the Full how thwarted his moon-maddened changeling-self had felt, and staying in the Shack was only moderately better than being caged. When no one could make it, or only Pete could, he sometimes wasn't fully healed until the next time. Soon Prongs was going to have a baby to keep him home, too. Padfoot was good company, but he wasn't _the whole pack_. Anyway, Remus didn't want to have to rely on Frivolous Black being reliable every month for the rest of their lives.

The Ministry's changing cells would give him company, but only his family and friends and a few of the teachers knew what he was, among the uncursed and outside the Project. He hadn't been able to find independent work as it was, and what if Jamie got fed up with funding their little company? Marauder's Moon products were a hit at the DMLE and with the Order, but those were limited markets that usually got charged reduced prices. The joke line wasn't doing as well. Oh, Zonko's kept them in stock, but didn't run out nearly as fast as Jamie and Sirius had confidently expected. They were almost always in the red. He'd get a glowing reference, of course, but _grows hair and cannibalism regularly_ wasn't a job skill in high demand. Not with anyone he'd care to work with.

No, he had to keep off their radar. Even coming here was a risk, but he couldn't live with himself if he didn't try. Ranjit and Belby wouldn't give him away, though, and Snape (thank Merlin and Dumbledore) couldn't. Remus thought he (probably) wouldn't have anyway, honestly. But it was best to have insurance, and Severus had only been anything _like_ Remus's friend for a few eggshell months before he'd somehow gotten too much information out of Sirius. Cunningly, Sirius insisted, although Severus had taken a poker-faced, commiseratingly unsympathetic I-won't-pry-if-you-don't attitude to the monthly 'sicknesses.'

Remus had barely felt he knew Severus even then, although he'd picked up enough to have a vague and uncomfortable idea about why he'd stayed at school that winter. He certainly didn't know Snape now, except that ceasing to be prey had only made his snappishness more coherent, hadn't eased it. Or his contempt. Which wasn't fair, because although Sirius was definitely hedging about what had happened, he hadn't been lying about its having been an accident. Remus knew when Siri was lying, didn't even need enhanced senses.

But those two never gave each other the benefit of any doubt, and Remus wouldn't have felt inclined to be fair to the mercenary bastard who'd bitten _him_. He certainly wouldn't have sat quietly (if irritably) in a room alone with Greyback with nothing but a desk between them and asked what the stinking hyena wanted.

"What, then?" Snape asked, drumming his long fingers on the desk. He looked as though he was trying to do too much. Remus thought he might be a little bonier than usual, and there was the kind of smudgy bruising under his eyes that one got from neglecting sleep rather than annoying people with quick tempers.

"There's a girl gone missing," Remus said. "Last seen a little over a week ago. I met her and her parents last time I came here, in the waiting room. I'm the only wizard they know who isn't assigned to their case. They asked me to ask around, and I know she wants to be in the study, too, so—"

"So you felt a kinship with a young idiot as self-destructively mental as you are?" Snape finished for him helpfully, turning around with tight, disdainful lips to pull a mug off a shelf behind him. He tapped its rim, and it filled with water.

"So I came by to ask if she'd been in," Remus said patiently as Snape drank. The cup stayed up in front of his thin mouth. It left only the beaky proboscis and black eyes visible, heavy-lidded with distance and distaste. "Her mum said she was worried about the transformations ruining her hands, so we thought she might still come by to try again here even if she wanted to get away from home for a while."

"Her hands," Snape repeated, eyes dropping broodingly to his own fingers.

He was silent for a long moment, during which Remus swallowed down the fervent desire to try telling him just one more time that he'd never had anything to do with Sirius's fit of whatever that had been. That he was, speaking personally, extremely _glad_ that Snape had escaped without more than a clawing and dented gauntlets (no one had ever explained those to Remus. Sirius had tried to say Snape's wearing silver armor to the Willow proved he'd been after proof of Moony's secret, but he'd reeked of guilt. Remus was heartstoppingly glad Snape had had them, whatever the reason and despite how _incredibly_ unpleasant that rash had made eating and talking for weeks), and wouldn't have to worry about things like that and worse.

He'd tried before. It never did any good. Quite the contrary. Reminding Snape about that night was always a very loud disaster.

"I think I do remember a girl fussing over her fingers," Snape said after a long, frowning moment. Maybe Remus had misunderstood his silence. He always smelled edgy and intense under his very herbal soap; it was only a matter of degree. That and eyes so dark Remus couldn't see the pupils made him hard to read. "Blonde, muggle before the curse, bitten very recently, still at school? Musical." Remus nodded. "I haven't seen her here since she applied. Do you know her name?" Remus opened his mouth to give it, but Snape waved him silent. If he'd been anyone else, Remus would have called the motion too hasty, but from Snape it was, of course, just impatiently imperious. "Don't tell _me;_ I've already told you all I can. But feel free to ask the others; I hardly pour tea and sit down for a heart-to-heart with every lost werelamb that bleats its way lostly through the door."

Remus believed him. Without reservation.

Snape went on, "Being rather busy. On the subject of which, I have some proposals to screen."

It was a dismissal, and Remus got up. He also, though, curiously asked, "Proposals?"

"Proposed variations on the potion to screen for problematic interactions," Snape elaborated, with a bored shrug. He stood, too, in baseline politeness, but didn't make any move to see Remus out. "Lovegood's an inexhaustible garden of ideas, but she isn't very discriminate about them. I'm not risking my third pair of hands letting Belby see some of these." He shuddered a little.

"I see. Well, goodbye, Severus." He shook his head slightly as Snape waved an absent hand at him and, sitting, bent to his work. That had been downright civil, for Snape, but it would still be a relief and a pleasure to go down the hall into warmer company.

"Lupin!"

Remus turned, privately cursing. He'd been _so close_ to getting out without a quarrel.

Snape was looking indecisive, in a way that would have spelled Really Big Trouble on Sirius or James's faces, although not the especially nasty kind. He tapped his fingertips rapidly on the desk again, and said, "You like things quiet. Peaceful, that is."

"Er… yes?"

Some more finger-tapping. "Were you planning to mention to anyone that you came by today?"

"Is there a problem, Severus?"

Snape appeared to come to a decision. He gave a little grimace and the wickedness went out of his eyes, chased off by a sardonic _look oh look how adult I'm being_ expression. "That's down to you. There probably will be, if Potter finds out that you were here today at about this time and I wasn't already in the office when you arrived."

Alarmed, Remus asked, "What have you done?"

Snape looked at him for a long moment, mouth twisted in bitter amusement. "What do they say about assumptions, Lupin? I saw him publicly embarrass himself. That's what I've done. He doesn't know it—thus far. So: as to whether there'll be trouble, it's entirely your decision."

Remus blanched. "I won't say a _word,_" he said fervently.

"Won't deny I'm just as pleased," Snape said, turning back to his work. "It'd be a toss-up whether the building would survive, although one might hope for an interceding apoplectic stroke." It was as close to a thank you as Remus had gotten from him since the end of '75. That had been a Christmas like one of those nested balls of carved ivory: a beautiful, fragile, soap-bubble impossibility that had made the following spring even more of a Bludger to the balls by contrast, undoubtedly for them both.

Then he made a noise like he was grinding teeth that were in his throat, and demanded of no one in particular, "_Fenugreek and clauricorn bicuspid?!_ Does she want to turn you all _weightless?!_"

Remus fled.

Questioning revealed that Ming did, indeed, want to turn them all weightless. She thought that nullifying gravity's pull might ease some of the soft-tissue tearing a transforming body was put through. Remus didn't think it was nearly as bad an idea as it was silly, and might even be a good one. He'd let her have the joy of explaining it to her senior apprentice, though.

And no one else had seen Claire since she'd been turned down as a test subject, either.

* * *

*明月 = Míngyùe = bright moon

Those of you who've read the backstory know that Chang (as was) is downplaying her history with Severus to the Marauder. It's hardly his business, and besides, it's more graceful not to sabotage people's chances to prove they've grown up, she feels.

**ETA:** Having been asked why Luna looks like she does if she's that closely related to Cho: I had the idea in the first place because of her 'bulging' eyes (Harry does not think about how people look in flattering terms. You get described with maybe a hair color and height or you have bushy hair and buckteeth or a pointy chin or whatever. I blame Petunia). There's a certain Asian eye-phenotype that would look out-of-place enough to be remarked on in a mostly Western-looking face. While there's also a more English type of eye that could be described that way (and Xeno may have it, although he may also just goggle at everything very hard, with Lamarckian effect), the people I've seen with the latter haven't had eyes that I personally would have called anything so dramatic as bulging _while they were still kids_. Also, the Asian-derived type of convex eyes might, I thought, be more noticable to someone who grew up somewhere as whitebread as I assume Privet Drive is.

She has Xeno's hair, blond having dominance over black. It might not work quite that simply for muggles, but Xeno has what looks like (less tidy) _Malfoy _hair, which seems to be as dominant as Weasley/Prewett red among wizards. I really don't think coloration works exactly the same way for them. We've got four major characters with green eyes (Lily, Harry, Minerva, and Horace), which is a pretty high concentration of green-eyed people, and then there is the whole Harry's Hair Acts Like James Wanted His To thing.


	12. Diagon Alley

Neurotic cat is neurotic. Or: Regulus might gripe less about advancing the plot if someone would tell him what this tedious nonsense is _for_.

* * *

**Warnings:** more sibling rivalry than there are siblings. Which is the root cause of the nickname-overuse. Also, more nastiness than the narrator is aware of.

**Hopefully unnecessary extra disclaimer: **while I trust it's generally understood that the characters' opinions don't necessarily reflect the author's, I'm just going to underline it since today's narrator was a Seeker at school and considered being aerodynamic important. Also, he grew up in a family of beautiful people, and the ones he's closest to are aesthetes. Reasons may not excuse, but they do cause when not prevented.

Have an extra chapter today. Happy New Year!

* * *

Diagon Alley

Reg was having one of his periodic bouts of Understanding Sirius. They always made him uncomfortable—well, all right, that wasn't quite the thing. To be exact, they gave him the screaming willies. He didn't have to imagine what Mother would say if she noticed him being sympathetic. He'd heard it all. She couldn't possibly have kept anything back.

Surely. Probably. Right?

Thus the terror.

It was, he reflected gloomily, not in the least Spike's fault. Er, not much. A bit his fault. Well, a lot his fault, but in the same way that a salamander would _massively contribute_ to the explosion if an erumpent gored it. There would have been an explosion whatever the thing gored, though, and if it was an erumpent, it was going to gore something. Common knowledge.

Whereas almost no one knew (ta, Bast) what happened if you stabbed a salamander. Let be, they hummed along placidly in their fire-pits, keeping the cupboards above them cold, or being petted and happily exploited by worshipfully grateful fire brigades in dragonhide gloves. Nobody ever had to find out what they could do, if they were only left alone.

Similarly, not really Spike's fault, or at least not something he wanted, but nearly all about him all the same. Reg had never seen him and Sirius be close enough to recognize each other without the air between them crackling so hard it snarled. It was as if flint and steel were all chased about with really powerful magnets.

It was, Reg was sure, all about Siri having suspected from day one that Mother would think Severus would have been about fifty times as satisfactory a son as Siri was. It might have died out if he hadn't been a hundred percent right.

Not that Mother had any more _liking or respect_ for Spike than she had for Sirius. She made no bones, though, about approving his efforts to make up for the way the worthless Prince traitor (her words) had ruined him before he was born.

She'd thrown him in Siri's face every chance she'd had. Even people drenched in filth have more understanding than you do, style of thing. Why are you letting that mucky little half-breed show you up at this or that. Some people would kill for your opportunities. At least THAT boy TRIES.

Which was why Reg was sort of understanding Siri right now, and hating Spike a bit. His life was really, really, really not going according to plan.

Not that he'd exactly had a plan, which was something of a sin for a Slytherin. Or at least, he hadn't had a plan beyond keeping up Father's investments and making sure there was always a Black finger in every pie, doing his part to keep the wizarding world quietly chuffing along. Surely that was ambition enough?

But then there'd been Bella making _assumptions_ about how interested everyone else must be in her new obsession. And it was really difficult to disappoint Bella, because she'd gut you with her fingernails and forbid the house elf to fetch help until you were nearly bled out.

And Reg was even worse at saying no to her than most people, because she loved him and he knew it and who could help loving Bella back? She was brilliant and funny and warm and dangerous and charming and willful and beautiful and certain. She was everything a Black ought to be. Just, in her case there was such a _lot_ of the dangerous and willful.

So he'd gone along. There was no workable way not to.

Anyway, he'd gotten Spike to lend him one of his old Muggle primary-school history textbooks once, when he was deciding whether to take the class. The muggles _very obviously_ needed someone to keep them in order. Witch-burnings were the least of it; apparently muggles had been for centuries and still were liable to very enthusiastically kill each other en masse over who was right about religion, and the way they treated their females was extremely short-sighted.

Spike said both those things were really about power, and maybe he was right. Reg knew, though, that things that were 'really about power' were only _really_ only about power at the top levels. The mass of people involved in any movement, or who sat back and let it happen, were liable to believe what they'd been told and resent who they were aimed at. Either way, it would be a good thing for muggles to have more sensible and enlightened people at their reins, who could make them calm down and _think_ without hurting them when they got overexcited.

Too, something really did need to be done about the way mudbloods kept straggling into Hogwarts without the least idea about anything, spreading their bad manners like fads and then raising their own children to be nearly as ignorant as themselves.

But even if there hadn't been anything to agree with, he would have had to go along. He and Spike were the same, there, only it was all closer-to and more personal for Reg. It would have been career suicide for Spike to decline the Mark, too, once invited. But Evan would have done his best for him, and if that had failed, well, there wasn't much holding them in England he—or, rather, _they_ couldn't have taken with them. Between his brewing and Evan's brushwork, they could have managed anywhere even if Evan had been, like Sirius, blasted off the Tapestry and cut off with a knut.

Which he wouldn't have been. Darius Rosier was fervent in the pureblood cause (and the Dark Lord's cause, too) but his family were a coolheaded lot. When they found they disagreed with each other over politics, they didn't fight over it. They didn't collude with each other against whichever sides they supported, either, but they were pleased not to have all their eggs in one basket, and started pre-plotting paths back to respectability for whichever side of the family lost right from the start.

As for Evan's mum, Reg's Aunt Callisto was a Black woman through and through. Politics might be both lucrative and enjoyable, but one's own blood came first. No competition. If the lordlings and little ministers began to give the family difficulty, one banged heads together, or, if necessary, cut them off. No games, no fuss.

Not like Reg's mother. Even though she'd been born a Black, too, her branch of the family was... fervent. That was where Bella got it from. She took after her father more than either of her sisters did, and then took it whole new places.

No, if Ev and Spike had decided to leave when they were asked to join, no one would have hunted them down. Well, not _very _hard, although try telling Spike that, the twitch. Whereas resisting Bella's enthusiasm under the impression that she would have felt betrayed and gone terrifyingly predictable would have been the last underestimation Reg would ever have made.

She'd protect him from almost anyone, if it occurred to her. No one would go up against her for him, though, except for his parents and his elf. Narcissa and Evan would probably try to talk her down if she needed stopping, but that would be as far as they'd go. She had Narcissa trained not to challenge her to her face, and it wouldn't occur to Evan to do anything active. He was scary-brilliant at setting lethal traps his prey could only trip by being awful… but by then they'd already been awful.

Spike would want to help, but although he might (three days out of five) be just crazy enough to go up against Bella if he thought it would do any good, he wasn't crazy _and_ stupid. He was very good at knowing when horning in would just make things worse later for the person he wanted to help, when he wouldn't be there.

Reg had never asked why. He'd seen how skinny and scraggly Spike was every September on the Hogwarts Express, how stiffly he'd held himself one year, the way he'd kept his arm tucked in his robes once, how he'd kept his face ducked under his hair the whole ride after the last summer he'd spent at home, curled up exhaustedly on Evan's shoulder, and failed not to limp his way to the carriage. You got people like that in Slytherin. You never asked, you never teased, you never sneered. No matter who you were, no matter who they were, no matter what else you might sneer at them about. Not Done. You made yourself convenient or you stayed out of it.

Reggie's cousins would make themselves convenient, but what else could they do? And even Spike, when it came to Reggie and Bella, would have the sense to stay out of it, thank Salazar. He'd know he could only make her more vicious.

And none of this lot of hamstrung allies were in the least appropriate or appealing as bed partners, let alone to think about living with. His own yearmates were all right for a bit of fun, but not reliable. Gildy, for example, was a delight in (very) small doses, but also completely mental and quite possibly a changeling. He only exaggerated his talents to other people, anyway; he wasn't one to lie to himself about his own strength and take on more than he could handle.

The girls had more sense than to so much as say boo to Bella, and Rabastan and Thorfinn had never yet been observed wanting to. She had them completely enthralled. Besides, Bast and Thor were both a bit… excitable, in their ways. Reg had never even really got on with the twins, and _really_ never wanted to sleep with either of them. No real partners to be found anywhere, not like his cousins had.

The one he should have grabbed was Mel Selwyn: tough as nails, plain-dealing and trustworthy and intelligent enough, if not really clever. They'd been a good team as prefects. He'd never have managed to keep order without her backing him up, although she'd never had any ideas of her own. Her family was impeccable, too; his family would have approved the match in an instant.

The trouble was that he'd never been able to make himself _want_ her without a potion, no matter how much he liked her. When she'd gotten married (some Hufflepuff a few years ahead of them, name of Bulstrode. Solid-looking bloke; bred crups and thestrals), Reggie had been thoroughly annoyed at himself both for letting her get away and for being happy for her instead of upset. He should have been able to make himself want such a good match. Instead he kept wanting people as soft or bruised or nervy as he was himself. What good was that to a Black? Reg wasn't getting _anywhere_.

And now Spike (never soft, well past nervy, so far past bruised you had to think of new words for cracked) was getting summoned to private sessions at least three times a week, as far as Reg could make out. Whenever Reg saw him, he looked like a fifth-year in his very first month on the Quidditch team: constantly wrecked from being mercilessly whipped into shape every day and trying to do OWL study at the same time, but not unhappy about it. Focused, certain. Clearly, he'd been chosen for something important.

Whereas Reg didn't even know what he himself was doing. Although his instructions had been specific enough that he'd know what to do even if things went pear-shaped, the whys of it seemed to be need-to-know. Reg, apparently, didn't.

He could imagine, too, what Mother would say if she found out that a Black, and more than that a favored child of her own, was being treated very nearly like a foot soldier. But Bella was all over glowing with pride at him. His assignment must be important, too, even if he wasn't allowed to understand it.

And there was his assignment, speak of the far too useless to be called a devil. Reg sighed quietly to himself, and flicked his wand at the chubby blond. Really, who was still _chubby_ past third year or so? Didn't the walking botch know a single useful charm, or what the library had been for?

As the lump passed down the street, people were pulled to glance at him by Reg's jinx. Lips curled, nostrils flared, eyes jerked away or lingered unpleasantly. Every single face showed it did not like what it saw. He left it on at full strength just till Pettigrew was breathing hard and stealing nervous, upset glances this way and that, and then reduced the intensity and zipped further along ahead.

He brought it to full power again, but only once. Often, but not too close together, he'd been told. The second time, he arranged to be coming out of Fortesque's as Pettigrew passed. He gave the waste of space an uninvested and meaningless but civil smile, and ambled off aimlessly towards the bookstore. As they passed each other, he let the jinx fall to a minimum again. There had to be a more efficient way to do whatever he was doing than this.

Later on in the week he'd have to get Mulciber into place to be the comparatively-friendly face once Reg had set up the mood, and then Avery. That was going to be a bother, because Avery didn't deal well with not understanding why he had to be nice to someone who wasn't worth loathing, and also couldn't do it very well without being Imperiused. In his case, a targeted confundus just did not do the trick. Mulciber, for his part, had problems with his face looking creepy when he was trying for pleasant. And they both thought it still mattered that they'd graduated first.

It was dull and frustrating and confusing and repellant, and tonight he'd be wishing with his whole soul that he was still at it. He was due for a _practice_ with Bella and her husband and Bast. That meant... _dealing with_ people he didn't care two knuts about one way or the other, because their Lord would not be maneuvering from a position of strength if his army-in-reserve was unprepared for war.

At least they'd only be muggles. The unsavory sort of muggles no one would miss, at that. And he might even be able to get away with seeing to them quickly, depending on what kind of a mood Bella and Rus were in, on whether they wanted tonight to be about efficacy or, or… anything else, really.

And he was absolutely sure that Spike wouldn't have to do any such thing, probably not ever. Bella sneered _all the time_ now about how sheltered Snape was, with his clean, prissy, workman's hands. Something of a contradiction there, Reg hadn't been able to stop himself thinking, although he knew what she meant.

But she'd go on about how while it was right and just that a halfbreed mill-shrew should not be allowed a chance to spoil the meat of The Work, there was something wrong and suspicious in someone as knife-savvy and vicious as him not begging for opportunities.

So, yes, he could quite understand why Siri would have been a bit fraught over Spike even without the two of them eternally spitting sparks like brother wands trying to duel each other.

He was glad he couldn't empathize with _that_. Reg might understand Sirius a little right now, but he was very much not his manebrained brother. For instance, he could discriminate between good and bad excitement in his life. All the excitement he was getting these days was already horrible enough without picking a fight with the cobra and having the fer-de-lance casually paint a target on his face, thank you very much.

* * *

**Next**: Peter's starting to feel these Junior Order meetings are a bit useless. And did his friends always look at him like that?


	13. Unplottable, London

Peter's starting to feel these Junior Order meetings are a bit useless. And did his friends always look at him like that?

* * *

**Apropos of nothing: **I mentioned to **hwyla** that Remus's idea of wordplay is adding an M to Sirius's The Who shirt (this idea is from my fic _Twas_ _Brillig_). She immediately became responsible for the udder TRAVESTY of giving the world 'Marauder's Moo' products. The Severus-muse _has not stopped laughing since_. Evan doesn't usually paint on velvet, but he'll take requests from someone who gets Severus to cheer up for that long, and he quite likes the idea of painting matador!Severus. Getting him into a red-lined cape will be a bit of a struggle, but he'll see what he can do. ;)

**Admission**: I did not look up a map of the London subway system. However, people who aren't native to my city find ours to be very confusing and it looks simple and clean to _me_, so I'm just assuming any subway map would be confusing the first time someone looks at one.

* * *

Unplottable, London  


Sirius had blue gunk in his hair. This was about par for the course these days, but Pete would have expected him to wash it out before settling down with—what was that? "What is that?" he asked, squinting at it.

Sirius yelped like Padfoot and the enormous folded-up not-a-scroll went flying, along with all Sirius's long limbs and a carpet slipper. Pete caught the former with an accio, but perusal wasn't much help. There were words which didn't seem to add up to anything, and a very complicated diagram which was essentially a mare's nest.

"Circe and Merlin heels-up in a hayloft!" Sirius sputtered, trying to get himself right-side up. "Heard of knocking, you berk?"

"I've even employed the practice," Pete parried absently, still squinting at the thing. He hadn't _this_ time, but Sirius had been far too absorbed to have noticed. "You were busy with the… really, Paddy, what _is_ it? Some kind of map?"

Sirius nodded, retrieving his slipper. "What the muggles use instead of the Knight Bus," he said. "The Underground, Dumbledore says they call it. It being underground. Dead original, that."

"Awfully." Maybe if he turned it another-side up.

"Let that lot in for me, will you?" Sirius asked, getting up altogether with a long and somewhat involved stretch. "I want to wash this out before Moony or McKinnon gets here."

"Reckon I'd better," Pete agreed, giving Sirius's hair a pitying look just for fun.

"It can't be that bad!" he sputtered, pelting away. There followed a horrified, mournful, gleeping sort of noise from the vicinity of what was, doubtless, the nearest mirror.

Left to himself, Peter didn't fight the wan, bitter little smile that drifted its way to his lips. It would do Sirius good to feel less than perfect for five minutes together. If only he was likely to manage it for longer than five seconds.

It had been the sort of pure luck that Sirius got far too much of that his first arrival had been someone who'd only laugh at him a little; Peter hadn't even been early. It wasn't long before all his couches and large portions of the floor were occupied with, mostly, truly horrible and most unmilitary posture. Lily and Alice's bumps were making them sit nearly properly, at least, other than leaning back.

In fact, five minutes after he'd walked in, the only person absent was Sirius, evidently still fussing with his hair. It wasn't long before Marlene lost patience and sent Remus to go haul him out.

He came unwillingly, protesting and flailing, his hair all turned to blue feathers on one side of his head.

"Well done, mate," Fabian said, admiring, while Gideon stuffed nearly an entire pillow into his mouth to keep from howling loud enough to get kicked by whichever of the women were crankiest today. "What were you trying to do?"

"Winged shoes," Sirius said sulkily. "We've about got the footpad ones sorted, I mean, they're quiet as you like and barely leave any footprint even in mud now, and—"

"You got distracted," Lily finished for him, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, Sirius, they were _your_ idea."

"Well, it's all fiddly bits, now, innit?" Sirius said waving a careless, impatient hand. He'd splayed himself out on the carpet, legs wide enough to straddle the Express, and Pete noticed Gideon and Marlene both debating the virtues of ogling. "Life can't be all fiddly bits, Iris!"

Pete shared an eye-roll with James. It wasn't really clear to anyone whether Sirius was still uncomfortable being on a first-name basis with his friend's bride after seven-and-a-bit years of cold war, or was taking an easy way to annoy her due to being a git who did that with his friends.

"Leaps and bounds," Sirius trilled on, "that's progress! And then fiddly bits after tea when you're a bit dozy anyway."

She said, "Remus, I'd smack him for being wrongheaded, but I can't reach. Suppress the boy, will you?"

"Right-oh," Remus said agreeably, and picked himself up to go sit on Sirius's stomach.

"Heavy!" Sirius protested. So, with a put-upon sigh, Remus ended up lying crosswise over him, propped up by his elbows.

"New business or progress reports?" asked Marlene impatiently.

"No, wait, sorry, drinks," Sirius said, and shot a spell at his kitchenette. The cold-box opened and a tray with pitchers of lemonade and pumpkin juice floated out. The pitchers were joined, before they got to the living room, by a stack of mugs and the pots of tea and butterbeer he'd evidently had warming.

"_Now_ new business," Padfoot said when everyone had finished pouring. The pots and pitchers, naturally, were just as full as when they'd begun. "Pete, where's that—oh, thanks." Waving the map, he said, "Dumbledore flooed by in a rush and told me to get Hogwarts-familiar with this Gordian knot here, but he didn't say why. Anyone got any idea?"

"Reckon I could take a guess," said Frank, whose brown-socked feet had landed on Fabian's shoulder again. He was, himself, rubbing his wife's. Pete wasn't sure the kind of noises she was making were really on at even a partial Order meeting, although fortunately the sort of shape she was in was off-putting.

"Guess away, me old teacup," James said magnanimously, nearly decorating the floor-sitters with a splash of butterbeer as he waved his hand in gracious invitation.

"Jamie, what does that even mean?" Lily asked, somehow fond and acerbic at once.

"That he's been reading hundred-year-old adverts for packaging inspiration," Moony told her, only just on the affectionate-despair side of grim and headachy. "Go on, then, Frank."

Grinning (Pete didn't think it had been funny), Frank said, "Reckon he's worried about, well, I mean, look what happened in the Grindelwald wars."

General blankness, although Lily and Remus were nodding slowly as though he was at least making partial sense.

"Sweetheart," Alice said, managing to rub his wrist with her toes, "you were almost uniquely swotty in Binns' class, you know."

"Well, the _books_ were interesting," Frank said lamely. "I just did the reading while he droned."

"Yes, all right," Moony said, "But what _about_ the Grindelwald wars?"

"The bombings," Frank said, as though it were obvious. "All the muggles holing up in shelters. Sitting ducks. Reckon Dumbledore wants to make sure the places people could conceivably hide in are actually safe."

"And," Pete put in, an idea occurring as, changing his nauseatingly thick and warm butterbeer for lemonade, he tried very hard to think about something _other than ducks_, "if we secure it first, it'd be a great way for _us_ to travel. As a fallback, I mean. When we don't know a place to apparate to it. They're all the nose-in-the-air sort of purebloods, right? They'd never think of it."

There was an excited hum. Pete noticed that his best friends were all looking at him. Remus had the corner of his lip quirked in that unsettling way he had where you couldn't quite tell what he was thinking, and the other two were giving him the sort of fond expressions they always gave him. He was having more trouble, lately, ignoring the feeling that these were just a bit patronizing.

"Trust you to think of using underground passages, Wormtail," James said.

Peter colored, and looked down at his hairless hands with their short and increasingly bitten nails. He wasn't sure even himself whether he was flushing with pride or resentment. "Sounds like Dumbledore's already thought of it," he muttered. "Reverse-arithmancy."

"Modesty," Sirius countered, shaking his head as sadly as if he meant dragonpox. Without lifting his head, Peter scowled.

The meeting burbled on, charms and fancies and protections and plans and map-plottings, and nothing, nothing, nothing that would have saved him. _Order of the Phoenix_, he thought, _Junior Division, Committee For Keeping Their Own Creative Overenthusiasm Out Of Our Beards._


	14. 18 Dye Urn Alley (d)

Regulus is increasingly _very unhappy_ about what being a Death Eater is turning out to mean. This (read: Bellatrix) being even more of a problem than tea made by Evan (which is saying something), he feels strongly that flying reindeer are an inappropriate subject for discussion at this time. _Severus._

* * *

**Notes: **Not _plot_, per se, but setup for plot. As will be the case for most of the domestic scenes.

* * *

#18 Dye-Urn Alley #18  


"Ow!"

"Well, I'm sorry, Severus," Reg said testily, "but sometimes, you know, you just don't take a hint."

"What hint?" he asked blankly, rubbing at the fading tingle of the stinging charm between his eyes.

"Make the man some tea, Spike," Evan supplied helpfully from behind his catalogue.

"You make it," Severus said disagreeably. "I'm working."

"You're staring into space," Regulus corrected him.

And got, not unexpectedly, a narrow-eyed, irritated look. "Thinking about work is working. When did you even come in?"

Regulus hadn't just knocked, he'd rung the bell. Twice, presumably because Evan had expected Severus to answer it.

There wasn't anything odd, though, about a Severus who'd been staring into space not hearing it or noticing Evan letting him in. Jumpy though he could be, Spike having a brainstorm in a safe place was legendary. Once Mulciber and Wilkes had come in when he was mulling over a book in the common room, and they'd built nearly a full card-castle on his back before he noticed. Of course, he'd sent them off to the Pomfrey with thirty fingers each and heads that rang like bells whenever they moved as soon as he'd noticed, but by then they'd only had the left battlements left.

Therefore, Reg ignored the question. "Besides, Evan's tea's solid enough to stop the Knight Bus and thick enough to pay for the chocolate."

"Well," Severus said reasonably, "you stung me. Go on, Ev, poison him."

"Oh, I wouldn't bother making tea just for one, emerald of my sugar bowl." Ev threatened amiably, still without looking up.

_"Gah._" But he got up and went to the kitchen, Regulus trailing behind. He turned around at the last minute and called back, "And I was not!"

"Whatever you say, Spike," Evan called back placidly.

"Was not what?" Reg asked.

Severus gave him gimlet eyes, but he just kept looking curiously back (it was the only possible response) until Severus sighed and hunched his shoulders a little and griped, "Inappropriate."

"Oh. Yes, you were. What were you quote unquote working on, anyway?" Reg asked, tacking it on quickly, before Spike could turn it into an argument.

Severus turned and looked at him critically. "What are _you_ working on?" he demanded. "Your hair looks worse than mine."

Regulus went pale. Crying, "It does not!" he ran to the bathroom to check it. "It does _not!_" he repeated with thoroughly justified indignation, coming back. Then, suspiciously, "What are you grinning about?"

"Thank you for your participation in our study," Severus salespersonned at him brightly, which was unutterably disturbing. "You will be compensated with one, brackets-on one brackets-off, extra biscuit."

"You're detestable," Reg sulked, dropping into the kitchen chair while his host puttered. "What study?"

Severus used less wand-work in his kitchen than most, so he was able to turn while filling the kettle. "You really believed me for a minute just then, didn't you?" he asked, his sharp face keen again, eyes digging in like they might peel back Reg's whole skull to get at his brain. _Phew_. Reg relaxed. "Even though I know for a fact you routinely schedule yourself a full half-hour every morning to make sure your hair is as imperturbable as it can get without being petrified and failing to flutter charmingly in the breeze."

That last was on the snide side, but Reg would have been flustered anyway. "I—well, I did believe you, as a matter of fact!"

"Caught you on an insecure point?"

"No, er…" Regulus looked uncomfortable, and said, "Look, I'm sorry, Naj, but _anyone_ would get insecure if you told them that."

"If I, specifically, told them, or if they were told?"

Regulus thought about it, relieved that Severus seemed to be in an academic rather than a prickly mood. Using Spike's serpent tag to acknowledge you knew he could bite you hard wasn't in the least mollifying when he wasn't in a mood to be mollified. "It's worse when it's you saying it."

"Why?"

"Well, you usually go edgy when you lie, for one thing."

"Didn't I this time?" Reg shook his head, and Severus made a considering noise, cupping the kettle in his hands. It was, by now, starting to sweat. "All right, that's one thing, what else?"

"Does there have to be more?"

"_Is_ there?"

"I suppose… why would you insult both of us at the same time?"

"Not sure I did, Felis," Severus drawled. "'As bad as' has no meaning on its own. But I see _you_ thought so."

"I thought you were talking yourself down and me with you," Regulus snapped, embarrassed. Spike didn't often riff off his cat-snake name (being no more likely to use it for anything but humiliating Regulus than anyone else was), but Reg deserved it for scampering off to the mirror as if he were Sirius.

Severus's skepticism was punctuated by a shriek from the tea-kettle. He put it down at once, shook out his hands, and did some things with tins and wooden boxes that Reg couldn't see through his skinny back. "And why did that make it credible?" he asked over his shoulder. Clearly he didn't believe Regulus thought he'd been talking himself down, but that just as clearly wasn't important to him at the moment.

"Well… if you were just snapping at me, why take it out on yourself, too?" Reg reasoned, picking his reaction apart slowly.

"I might have been snapping at myself and taking it out on you," he pointed out.

"No, then you wouldn't admit it was about you at all," Reg said, positive.

"Got you there, Spike!" Evan called from the other room.

"Yes, all right," Severus called back in an unruffled voice, raised to include his flatmate. "But is that everyone or just me?"

"Whyyyyyyy?" Evan called back, dripping suspicion.

"Don't make me why-ne back at you; I can hold my breath longer."

"He can, too," Evan told Regulus happily.

"_I didn't want to know that!"_ Reggie wailed. And Evan was so _weird_,too. If you were going to do that you were at least supposed to be _smug_ about it, not just happy like you expected everyone to be happy along with you. It was practically a _rule_. It was completely unfair the way Evan sailed over all the rules all the time and everyone just smiled back at him and flirted and sighed wistfully behind his back about what a saint he must be to put up with Snape.

"Apologize to the man, Spike," his evil prat of a cousin suggested, still from the living room, full of sympathy and reproach.

"It was perfectly innocent when I said it," Severus noted dryly. "As is generally the case." He handed the tea tray to Regulus, sans kettle, and they went back in. "Well? Is it everyone, or me-specific?"

"Most people most of the time, I should think," Evan said cautiously. "Defensive and self-depreciating are mutually exclusive, as a rule of thumb. But it falls under inked, especially if the person _knows_ they're feeling defensive and doesn't want to let on." He saw Reg's confusion and elaborated, "You Never Can Tell. YNCT: inked."

"Move," Severus told him, holding the kettle only slightly menacingly.

"What."

"Move."

They eyed each other for a moment. Regulus took that to time observe that Severus, the rat, had arranged the biscuits into an ungraceful but distinct pattern. It would be obvious if he snuck one before the tea was poured, and then everyone would _smirk_ at him.

Evan sighed with a little smile, and moved from the armchair to the sofa. He was followed threateningly with a loaded kettle until he'd crammed himself up against the arm of it.

Severus put the kettle on the tray, and lay down. He had his head in Evan's lap and his unshod legs folded up against the sofa's other arm. "Evan doesn't think my hair is disgusting," he said in a put-upon voice, eyes closed.

It still took Reg aback when he did things like that. A bunch of kids crowded on the floor around Spike's legs (and very respectfully not talking to him at all except to ask the occasional question) had been a common Common Room sight in his last few years at school. And it was true that he'd spent quite large portions of his last few train rides to school napping on Evan and Narcissa, who'd never seemed surprised about it. So clearly his standoffishness had been a public-spaces thing, a public-face thing, and Reg really was pleased that he didn't seem to trigger it.

Still, different years visited each others' bedrooms far less often than girls visited the boys in their year, as a rule, and if he'd acted differently in his dormitory than in the Common Room, Reg hadn't seen him do it. He still wasn't used to this more relaxed Spike, who didn't shuffle around with knife-slitted eyes and his shoulders by his ears, or watch his tongue, and didn't hesitate before smacking the Rosier heir upside the head or curling up in his lap.

"Evan knows it isn't," Evan confirmed, lacing a gentle hand into the aforementioned hair. Which, honestly, Regulus would not have liked to try, although it moved like it was clean despite the unhealthy oily sheen, no clumping or clinging. "Unlike your current exhibition of table manners."

"I'm not sitting at the table, or eating. Table manners do not currently apply." After a moment, "What would you imagine I'd rather be doing right at this moment?"

"I'm still here!" Regulus said hastily.

Spike opened one eye and grinned evilly at him, snaking a hand behind Evan's back. "Nothing that can't be done from here, then? Nice image, Reg?"

"Lovely image," Evan agreed, perking up hopefully.

"Oh, _tea!"_ Reg exclaimed desperately. "Who'd like some nice _tea?"_

"And nobody thinks I want to stay at a party I leave early," Severus said speculatively, turning his head back into Evan's slow-stroking hand and letting his eyes fall shut again, "but they wouldn't assume they knew whether anyone who's still there wants to be there, would they? Barring unpleasantness and poorly-controlled expressions."

"You have a theory," Evan decided, in the tone that meant he was getting an idea what it was. So was Regulus, for that matter.

"Someone does," Spike said, putting a bit of an emphasis on that 'someone.' "Use what you've got, and all that." He turned back to Regulus, peeling his eye open again, and asked, "What _are_ you working on, anyway? You haven't got bags under your eyes yet, puss, but you are getting a rather strained look."

"Look who's talking," Evan said fondly, and bent down—presumably intending just to kiss his forehead, but Severus arched up enough to meet him partway.

"He is, though, look," maintained Severus, settling back down.

"You are, too, Reggie," Evan agreed, looking at Regulus critically.

Reg scowled. It was just like being back at school again, sharp black eyes on you and then suddenly Evan or Narcissa blithely sailing up to be concerned and inquisitive and prefectly. Presumably Regulus was supposed to take it as a nod to his age that Spike was siccing them on him to his face now.

"Drawn," Severus said sadly, his thin lips pulled wickedly up.

"Pale," Evan put in, shaking his head.

"—er than usual," Spike, who had no room to talk, evidently couldn't resist. He added in horrible delight, "You'll be getting _lines between your eyes_."

"I hate you both."

"But you know we must love _you,_ because we tell you the truth," Severus crooned, all darkest treacle and evil with evil sauce and black-honeyed evil on the side.

"And I know it's the truth because it's rude?" Regulus mocked his 'theory.'

"So I hear."

"But really, Reggie, what's wrong?" Evan asked, his overdose of concern thoroughly distracting a startled Reg from how evasive Spike had just been.

"Oh, don't give me your doe eyes," he snapped defensively, coiling himself around his teacup. "You think I don't know where half our intel comes from?"

"At least a tenth, anyway, I suspect, now Narcissa's not so mobile," Severus said meticulously, turning to bump Evan's side with (Regulus thought uncharitably) his beak. "What sort of doe has blue eyes? Not albino, that'd be pink. Wouldn't it?"

"Such flattery," Evan said modestly, fluttering his long, not at all dark lashes. "Sometimes, though, I think. What are you asking me for? You're the one who took Creature Care."

"Care of _Magical_ Creatures, Ev; we didn't do _deer_. And you had that commission for that ranch in Norway last year, you remember, the one with all the elves—"

"Those were reindeer. _Flying_ reindeer. Definitely magical creatures."

"Anyway, they were albino…"

"Just white, heart. Winter coats and all."

"Oh. Well, can't blame them. It was bloody freezing up there; I can't remember the last time my on-automatic magic wasn't enough to keep me warm."

Reg knew what that meant, more or less. Severus was always the person to stand near in bad weather and infamously never used cauldron thermometers, just like Becca Goldstein had never been known to get lost no matter _what_ the Hogwarts stairs did to her and Evan, though he couldn't see in the dark, had as good a feel for lighting charms as old Flitwick had had for acoustics. Still did, presumably.

"We were there for a _week,_" Evan pointed out, bemused.

"And a most productive week it was," Severus allowed in a _your data, while correct, is not relevant_ voice. "Fascinating lichens. Also: freezing."

"Well, Hat-stand, if you'd _eat something _once in a while…"

"Nonsense."

The interesting thing was," Evan told Reggie, suddenly enthused (which looked rather odd on him), "their bellies were blue. Which is only sense, of course, but you somehow expect black, even knowing reindeer aren't noct—"

Regulus, who had had his eyes clamped closed and been breathing with forced regularity for the last several minutes, raised his voice. A lot. "_You think I don't know where half our intel comes from_, tricking everyone's families into _chatting_ with you while they pose…"

"It's not a trick, Reggie," said Evan mildly, tilting his head at Reg curiously. "It's 'not being wasteful of what I hear in chats I'd have anyway.' If it worked when you weren't really inclined to like them, anyone could do it. _Spike_ could."

"Too kind."

Evan ignored him, beyond a brief grin down. "Besides, you don't do as good a portrait if you don't get to know them."

"And you know Evan's asking because he's worried," Severus put in sharply, turning over to rise onto an elbow, "so why digress into how he mines his targets?"

That was nasty. With _do you think you're a proper target for the tricking_ hanging in the air between them all, Evan cuffed Severus lightly around the top of his head and murmured, "Hood down, Prince Charming." Then he turned to Reg and said, "And you, claws in, if you please. Honestly, Reggie, what's the matter with you today?"

They were both giving him piercing, frowning eyes now, and that was so much harder to fight than Evan's untrustworthy innocent-concern look.

And he must have wanted them to nose in. Because had he really thought he could drop in here, on these two, and avoid it? Narcissa, maybe, especially with her sister involved. Narcissa didn't just _use_ good manners, she _had_ them. But Evan would saunter casually after you forever like he had nothing else to do, whistling, and a Ravenclaw hunting down a citation in NEWT year had _nothing_ on Spike when he thought something was wrong.

And Reg knew it. You had to be honest with yourself, at least. He collapsed a little, and muttered, "Bella thinks I'm too soft."

Evans' hissed breath was swallowed by Spike's gulped, "Oh, hell."

Before Regulus had time to blink again, he was on the couch with them. Evan held him down to let Spike, straddling him with eyes hard and cold and remote in diagnosis, run his wand up and down. It wasn't an Ollivander wand, Regulus noticed. This wasn't new information, but it was something to notice instead of how humiliated and small and taken-care-of and shrivelingly grateful he felt. He'd probably never been smaller than Spike physically, but some people took up more space than their bodies did. Reg wasn't one of them.

"He'll do," Severus told Evan over his head eventually, sitting down on Reg's legs. "Not hurt, no untreated curses or important curse residue. Something odd when I check for mind-magic effects, but it doesn't look like a confusion, a compulsion, or an attack. More of a muddle, really."

"She's teaching me to shield my mind," Regulus supplied.

"Not well, then," Severus said coolly. "No surprise. Wouldn't want you able to keep her out, would she. If that's even a real thing; could just as easily be an excuse to peek regularly."

"You shut up about Bella!"

"Does she ever shut up about me?" Spike asked. Under his calm, curious eyes, Reg held out barely a few seconds before sagging. "I trust you don't flare out like that at _her_."

Reg shivered. "Salazar, no."

"Good. Do it over me and I'll see your tombstone has fat cartoon mice on it and squeaks alarmingly whenever anyone drops flowers." Reg tried half-heartedly to knee him, and got his hair mussed for his trouble. Evan let go of his arms, and Severus swung off him.

When he didn't get up, they curled in around him, warm and unshakable. Sharp marble on one side, solid muscle on the other. Hawkishly, vigilantly still. Safe-making, as Reggie's real brother, impetuous and restless, battering himself raw against his cage, too choked and frantic to have spare attention for anyone else, had never been.

After a while, he said, quietly, "Stakes were lower at school."

"They weren't," Spike said grimly. "You just didn't see them."

He knew they were having an eye-conversation over his head. Because Severus had been absolutely right, he knew that everyone was better off if he refrained from finding out about it. Bella had said she'd be reading his thoughts, but the _books_ had said she'd only see his memories. And not from the outside, like in a Pensieve, either. What he didn't see or hear was safe. Probably. Safer.

"All right," Severus said eventually. "Bellatrix thinks you're soft and it's a problem. Then, how does the problem manifest, and what's to be done? And you can shut it, Ev; when your problem involves Bellatrix, you don't have time for dancing about."

"Right you are, Precision Corkscrew," Evan said in an eye-rolling voice.

"Call me a blunt instrument all you like," Severus scowled, "but she's a bola made out of two morning-stars. On fire. Greek fire. Big ones. As in, boulder-sized. Launched off a catapult."

"That's her chest."

"Evan. Image. Evan. Thorn. _In_ my side. No. Image. _Why._"

"Had to be said," Evan fluted, seraphically pleased with himself. "Walked right into it with the two boulders, you did. She is awfully well built, Spike, admit it."

"A Damascus blade is awfully well built," retorted Severus, "and I have no academic or aesthetic interest in this fact when it is _lunging sharply for my head_."

"Also, if anyone talks about Bella's breasts again I'm going to have to get violent," Regulus put in helpfully, cuddled warmly between them. The point of this was to not need this conversation obliviated before his next occlumency lesson. He should probably have tried harder to sound menacing. Er. He could tell her he'd been being politic? Because it was Evan. Who didn't need overkill. That might work.

"Whereas I'm merely going to have to get nauseous."

"You mean nauseated."

"So I do. Pity; it doesn't sound so well. Not so pithy. But what does Reg mean?" Severus turned back to him. "What does she think you're too soft for? Or, about."

"Well, er, you know…" he trailed off. It occurred to him that he didn't know what they knew. More, he couldn't assume that they, moving most often plausibly and in the light as they did, were _supposed_ to know anything about what went on under the moon. "Generally squeamish."

There was another long silence, but it felt leaden. Spike swore coarsely again, dispirited. His bony shoulder sort of drooped sturdily between Reg and the door, like a bird's wing become a shield. Reg didn't know how he did that, but he did know now that they had understood him, more or less perfectly.

"Reggie," Evan asked after a while, his arm close around Reg's back, "do _you_ think you're 'too soft'? I mean, are you having trouble… doing what you're being asked to?"

Reg nodded silently, and then there was third long pause. Like the first, it was heavy with a conversation Reg was glad not to be in on.

"Isn't anyone going to have any biscuits?" Severus asked, twanging with fabricated annoyance. "If not, I'm putting them away."

Reg tipped most of them into a handkerchief before saying, "All clear."

Spike stared at the near-absence of biscuit. "Clear indeed," he said dryly, and vanished into the kitchen with the plate, shaking his head.

He'd been promised an extra, so that was three for him, and two to bring Father, who approved of Severus's 'attempts to rehabilitate his bloodline' and also found him tolerably amusing. Two more for Aunt Lucy, who had been in some club with Severus's mum at school and had rather liked her, and two for Grandfather. Moving out of Grimmauld and in with Aunt Lucy had been good for his blood pressure, but he got lonely. Reggie would take any excuse to visit him. _Look, Granddad, mystery biscuits_, leading to one more attempt to convince him that Severus was worth knowing despite being descended from both a Muggle and Severus Prince, who Grandfather had detested no matter how good the family's blood was, would do nicely.

Oh, and one more biscuit: to tease the elf with.

Severus wasn't as reliably good a cook as Kreacher or the elves at school, of course. Still, his odd experiments were more likely to be interesting than passable, and, when interesting, slightly more likely to be spectacular than inedible. Reg had been keeping track. There was a chart. It cheered Kreacher up some days, and other days it made him try _really hard._ For Regulus, this was a win-win.

When he'd finished watching Severus walk off (not even _trying_ to be subtle about it, for Salazar's sake), Evan looked down at Reg seriously, and said, "All right, kit-cat."

Sometimes Reg wished they'd use his snake's proper Latin name. Only sometimes: with an even slightly improper intonation, Fallax was very nearly as bad as Pussy-pusskins: the all-time low and therefore, predictably, a Gildylocks effort.

"You and me, between the threads."

"_Are_ you on the tapestry?" Reg asked, trying to remember. When a witch married out, it didn't keep track of the line past her children. Would Bella respect that oath, if she saw it in his head, if it was with a Rosier?

"Yes, I ruddy well am," Evan said evenly, which was the Evan-equivalent of Spike hurling a paperweight at your head. "To Darius Rosier and Callisto Black, one-S. Book up, Reggie; I think _Spike_ knows the lineages better'n you by now."

"I know who your mum is! It's just—oh, never mind. Between the threads, then," Reg said hastily, seeing no reason to have his heirsmanship examined.

He knew the _lineages,_ he just didn't like looking at the tapestry. By the time knowing it cold had become his job, his brother had been swallowed by a scorched hole, and so had cousin Andi, who'd used to take him frog-hunting and taught him to skip stones with and without magic. And old Uncle Alf, not long after that, who'd always smelled like sandalwood and tobacco and always had a big hug and a sweet for Siri and Reg and who was dead anyway.

Dad hated it, too. Dad hated a lot of things. Dad and Reggie and Granddad were the same like that, but there was just no telling Mother anything. Siri had tried and tried and tried until he went horrible and cruel and mad with it. Now he was dead to them, just a burn-mark, and they were all scum to him.

He tried quirking a little smile. Hoping to distract himself if not Evan, he asked, "And sub rosa?"

"That too," his Rosier cousin agreed, with a secretive, faraway smile that meant he was thinking about something involving that phrase, probably Spike (but potentially almost anyone they knew, given what he'd been like the year or two before his OWLs), and definitely Things Regulus Would Rather Not Think About. Going serious again, he asked, "What kind of bad is it? For you."

Regulus thought about last night, and started to feel sick again very quickly.

Apparently his expression was answer enough. "Are you going to be able to keep on?" Evan asked grimly. "Or, rather, keep up?"

"I don't know," he whispered. "It's horr—hard, Evan, it's really hard."

He could feel Evan swallow. "I can't get you out of it," his cousin said starkly. "Even if you ask me, I… that hasn't worked. Backfired. I wish I could, Reggie, believe me. I would, if I could see a way."

"I'm not asking," Reg said hastily, something withering in him that he hadn't let himself know was there.

"In fact, I don't know that I can help you at all," Evan said. "But I expect Severus can."

"Severus!" Reg echoed, dubious. "Evan, if he were so much as to say one word, to anyone, and it got back to her, or to Him—"

"Oh, he can't get you out of it, either," the fer-de-lance agreed, coolly cordial. "Should I catch him trying, you're finished."

Although Reg wouldn't have dreamed of pointing Spike at anything so dangerous and useless even without the threat, he flinched.

Evan went on, his ally, too, again, again human and warm and comforting. Almost as terrifying as Bella, when you knew it. But, up to a line Reg had _no intention_ of crossing, on his side.

"But if anyone in this world knows about carrying on through nightmares, it's Spike. I doubt he knows how he does it, and I don't say he's gotten through without… well, without turning into Spike."

Reg made a noise that was half agreement and half urrrgh.

"But if you're not Slytherin enough to learn more than a teacher who loves you can find the words for, Rabbit," Evan went on, hugging him around the shoulders with a smile, "I don't know that there _is_ any hope for you."

* * *

The original terrible _sub rosa_ joke was in _The Wicket Gate: June 11_.


	15. Unknown

Voldemort would like to know how Severus intends to keep Bellatrix from destroying him, because the Dark Lord has a new assignment for his shiny new obsidian shiv...

* * *

Double post. No occasion, although I'm glad to have a double to give you since ffnet wasn't cooperative when I tried to post yesterday (sigh). They're just tightly connected, and both short. But not sweet. At all. Next time, maybe. n.n

Please read the note at the bottom before going on; I'm wondering whether to do something in the future and it's not something I should decide unilaterally. I'll leave this one up for a while: if you see it, I'm still asking and hoping for answers.

**style warning/note thingy**: just to reiterate? Tom is an insert-expletive possessive creeper. He thinks he sounds suave and magnificent, and patronizing in the I Am Your Patron way. Please do not imagine the author shares this impression. Also? Severus has dealt with the dude before. And noticed. So, yeah, there will be some style-matching from the serpent who'd bewitch the mind, ensnare the senses, and put a stopper in death.

That's 'style-matching' as used by salesmen and hypnotherapists, you understand, not, like, models or BFFs. Handbags and shoes do not come into it... although anyone who wants to write that parody, I'd read it. ;)

* * *

Undisclosed

"Tell me, Severus," said Lord Voldemort, toying with his wineglass in idle curiosity, "how you intend to keep my dear Bellatrix from destroying you."

Severus blinked, and frowned from behind his thumb. "Bellatrix thinks I'm important enough to destroy, my Lord?"

"She certainly will if she thinks you're stealing her protégé," Voldemort said dryly.

"Ah." Severus nodded, saying, "I was going to ask you about that once you were satisfied with today's progress, sir. Although 'stealing' Regulus is certainly not my intention."

"Ask me now," the Dark Lord invited. He smiled a little: he could, in the slight lean towards him, the miniscule head-tilt and millimeter's upslide of one eyebrow, nearly smell Severus mentally jumping up and down in paroxysms of bright-eyed, admiring curiosity about how he'd found out. It was a great improvement that there was barely a trace of it on his face.

"I'm not alone in worrying about failing you, my Lord," Severus said seriously. "Regulus…" he paused, seeming to search for words. "Regulus tended to deal with difficulties, as a child, by retreating. He was born with a sensitive temperament, and his family can be," another pause, this time certainly searching for tact. He settled on, "Loud. As a natural Slytherin, he naturally took the path of least resistance."

Voldemort nodded, and gestured gracefully for his man to go on.

"Don't mistake me, my Lord, he hasn't _complained,_ but those who know him can see that his evenings with the Lestranges are exhaustingly overstimulating for him," Severus shrugged, opening his hands. "I haven't asked what they've been doing, of course, but he seems to find them intense and primal, and not in a way that comes naturally to him. It wears on his nerves. He's getting tired, worn thin, jittery. Bellatrix and Rodolphus seem to have limitless supplies of energy. He feels the contrast deeply, and that only makes things worse. He's not someone who shame concentrates; it just frays him, makes him use up more energy fretting."

"And what do you propose to do about it, that she can't?" Severus gave no flicker of reaction to the silky warning in his voice, but Voldemort had no misapprehension that it had gone over his head. He was quite pleased.

"My lord," Severus said wryly, "can a leaping flame show a salmon how to live emblazoned? When something comes so easily that one has never had to learn it, how can one teach it to someone who finds it alien and baffling? Bellatrix is fueled by her work. She doesn't work at it, it's air to her. Regulus is quiet, and made for quiet things. He wants to learn what will help him keep up with her, if that's what you would have of him, from someone else who's had to learn not to be burned out."

"Is that you, Severus?" He asked this with a distinct droll note. It was a great deal easier to imagine Severus on metaphorical fire than it was the languid and rather plodding young Black heir. Severus kept that part of himself far more tightly contained than Bella did: only one of them was in a position to do as she liked, and they both knew which it was. But Lord Voldemort had seen him flare.

Severus didn't look much like his mother when he smiled, even when he smiled like the dust of bitter herbs. The face shape was there, and some of the features, but Voldemort remembered the gangling young Gryffindor as a sullen, truculent-looking girl, no real spark to her.

He hadn't been opposed to cultivating students of other Houses and years than his own, and still made a point of observing the children on their Hogsmeade weekends, looking for potential. He'd learned about some of his best that way, the ones with no connections to those who were already his. Rookwood, for example, and Travers, and Crouch.

Ellie Prince had been a good student, he'd been told, and there had been a glint of cleverness in her dark eyes. She'd struck him, though, as the sort of person who would have been in Hufflepuff if the Sorting Hat didn't take family histories into account. The sort of person who had no handles, who could be hurt but not turned, who would dig in up to the chin and never budge, and who had no flicker of interest in politics. A person, in fact, of no use whatever, worth no effort and best left alone.

How that sour lump and some clod of a muggle had created his skittish, quick-eyed, scorpion-tailed, bull's-eye-colored alley cat was beyond him. The boy must be a sport, a Plantagenet or Boleyn throwback as he was himself a Slytherin one.

"I suspect surviving the hunt isn't quite the same lesson as becoming it," the throwback was saying, dry. "But I'm happy to tell him what I know about… about keeping focused in a whirlwind, my Lord, if he thinks it'll help."

Voldemort nodded, losing interest in the subject, and said dismissively, "If you have time."

His man straightened at once, eyes fixing on him.

"Tell me, my own," the Dark Lord said, his pet slithering into his lap. "In your years at school, how many of your Dark Arts professors were still in residence at the end of the year?"

"Two, my Lord."

"So many!" he was unpleasantly surprised. "And did they return in the autumn?"

"No, sir. They both told us at the outset that they had one-year contracts that prohibited renewal."

"Clever," he murmured. "Well, Severus, the end of the academic year approaches."

"…Yes, my Lord."

Voldemort regarded the completely blank, wall-eyed expression with private amusement and outward severity. "If you mean to teach the Black boy how to ward off panic attacks in the night, my own, you had better work harder at not having them yourself."

"Yes, my Lord, but Regulus doesn't have the same kind I do. He thinks _Divination_ is how one predicts the future."

Voldemort laughed at his dour, depressed tone, tightened throat, and shallowed breathing. "Finish your wine, my soldier, and retrieve yourself. And then we will, let us say, go over your NEWT."

"_Ohfu_—Yes, my Lord."

He frowned. "Lapse like that again and you'll be punished, Severus."

"Yes, sir."

"The compliment is noted, but I cannot afford such crude and undisciplined reactions in you."

"I know," Severus gloomed, and that was why Voldemort would trust him farther than he could be thrown. When he treated superiors as peers, it was because he was in harmony with their thoughts, not in rebellion. When he forgot his manners, it wasn't out of resentment but from shame.

It needed beating out of him anyway.

* * *

**And now you've digested that,** this may be a good time to remind the reader that this is called the _the truth is as I see it is _arc, or the _Subjectiverse_ for short. Some People think truth is objective, of course, and there's only one of it, and they know what it is and are always right...

**But was it?** A good time, that is? I _feel_ like I ought to give periodic reminders that 1980's Wizarding Britain is populated by well-practiced and plausible lying liars, non-lying con artists, and pre-judging conclusion-leapers with variously-colored glasses on (in various permutations). Like, when someone _(coffcoffSeveruscoff)_ is pulling a snow job. Ought I? Would it be useful sometimes, when the narrator's being successfully gulled?

This chapter's a fair sample to base a decision on. Is it helpful to be reminded that Tom's assumptions about Severus's feelings and motivations are just assumptions, or was that totally clear to everyone before the note? Or is it not clear but maybe that's a good part of the reading experience in a Really Long Fic About Loyalty/Spy-Games And Mind-Tricks and the clarify's more like a spoiler? I'd like to take your collective temperature on the question; please tell me what you think.

Review!reviews are, as always, also cuddled.


	16. That Evening, Dye Urn Alley

Regulus takes a head trip, and might have preferred acid.

**warnings**: mind magic, Severus-brain, rawness, visual metaphor. Seriously, we're talking psychic vivisection of a survivor of chronic domestic abuse and bullying, as well as at least one (canonical) incident of sexual harassment. Those experiences won't be specifically touched on, though.

* * *

That Evening, Dye Urn Alley  


"…Hello?"

"Not tonight, Reggie," Evan's voice through the door was quiet, firm, and upset.

Regulus let himself in, and the wards didn't try to keep him out. Therefore he was welcome-enough, and had no guilt whatsoever about ignoring Evan completely. "Are you all right?"

"Fine, Reggie, go away."

He followed the voice to (with some trepidation) the loo. His eyes widened. "If I show this memory to Bella," he said calmly, "it'll satisfy her. She'll back right off you, Spike."

Severus, heaving like a blown horse and shaking like nothing Regulus had ever seen, lifted his head from between his knees to bare chattering teeth in a wry _yes she would but try it and death_ rictus. He was covered in sweat, slashed with teartracks over his face, huddled against Evan's side as the two of them perched on the side of the steaming bath. His hair was dripping with it, his sleeves and waistcoat slashed to ribbons, their rags patched all over with wet shadow-colors against the slate-green and thunderhead grey. Evan's own white sleeve had gone translucent around his shoulders, bleeding purple onto them both where Ev had apparently missed a drop of paint cleaning up.

"Regulus!" Evan snapped. "I said _not tonight._"

"N-no," Severus shuddered. "If I c-can tonight, I can _anyt-time_."

Evan looked him over calculatingly, and said, "All right, but have a soak first."

"_Now,_" the cobra hissed. Jerking his head up, he didn't just catch but seized Reg's eyes. "_Come with me._"

It was nothing like the Dark Lord's legilimency, or Bella's. Regulus wasn't pierced or probed, but caught up in a storm of terror. There was old, dull fear like a suit of weights that prickled and dragged and never went away, there was an hysterical babble of recent memories, all slashing wands and crashing magics, there was harsh, seething dust choking him, slicing up his throat, and there were sharp knives of snarling, vicious contempt circling, always waiting, stirred now into a vengeful hum.

**_THERE IS TIME_****.**

It was a rolling bell across the world of fear. Evan's voice, but full of warmth and cool breezes, all gentleness and immoveable steel. A ghost that shook everything, shook Regulus to his bones, it left him shaking on his knees in the settled dust. Left him still and clear and empty as glass, weak-limbed and tender, teary with relief.

The knives slowed. And there they were now, slow enough that Regulus could tell they were faces. He couldn't see whose; some veil blurred them from him. But though he couldn't name them, they were no faceless mass. Some retreated, some pressed close, and he found his eye drawn to a fist, a wand, a cold expression that even blurred was more frightening than either.

_NAME YOUR ARMS._

A woman's voice, crisp and low and uncompromising, with a strong note of Yorkshire. Not so all-encompassing or world-bending or strange as the first one, but pealing out powerfully out all the same. A wall at his back, wobbling to keep its balance like a tower of jelly so that he knew a shot might get past it to any part of him at any time, but not for its lack of trying. A world of comfort, even if it wasn't much help. He didn't recognize it, as he'd recognized Evan's voice, but it shot glad, fierce steel through his spine. And it made him want to scream his throat raw, too, scream his heart and every single organ out till there was nothing left but cured leather for a shield. Get behind it, throw himself over it, catch every curse himself, _cut_ _everything__ to bloody ribbons_ and dissolve in miserable, shameful gratitude at once (and oh, that one Reggie knew from the inside out), because the wall would never, never let him, not any of it. And he knew, steel rising again, that if he couldn't take the blows and she wouldn't let him end the shooter, he'd just have to fix the world. No other choice.

Answering that cold determination, the weights dragging him down flew apart, flew one by one to crash through him. Each impact was a doubled-image, something terrible that Regulus could almost taste but couldn't quite see and didn't want to, paired with one of Mother's screaming fits, or Bella's experiments, or Sirius's tantrums, and on, and on, and on.

Each impact was a horrible, fortifying smile, just _exactly_ like that rictus of Spike's in the outside world. _Got through that,_ each weight snarled, dark as Spike's voice with grim, unsatisfying triumph, _got through _that,_ got through THAT_. Every pulse of never-enough victory formed around him in a deflecting shield of impenetrable mirrors. Their combined weight, so crushing before, had become grounding, comforting, shifting scale mail.

Regulus's wand was in his right hand. It had gone a little strange, somehow too sharp and too thick at once, a machete and a club, but was unmistakably his wand, light and easy and familiar in his hand. Everywhere he looked there were the words of a spell, its wand motion seething beneath it, or the recipe of a potion, the shadows and scents of its ingredients, the beguiling coils of its steam. Runes and arithmantic arrays and equations were scribbled together like coal-dusty attic cobwebs stamped all over by inky sparrow feet, whispering sense when glanced at in passing, making his head hurt if he tried to make sense of them.

In his left hand was a thesaurus, bound in silvery, iridescent snakeskin, its pages humming and flipping in eagerness to serve, its green ribbon of bookmark flickering like a forked tongue. Reg nearly laughed.

_You have this._

And that was Spike's voice for nearly-real, no echoes, nothing strange about it. Just Spike's voice, brisk and prosaic and unhurried. Spike's very own slightly irritated what-are-you-fussing-about?

But pulsing below the sound of it was hot, savage, redblack _rip maim claw cleave burn you to ASH AND CINDERS fuck with ME you bastards I will SHRED you END you FREEZE YOU SOLID KICK YOU SHATTERED LEAVE YOU BLEEDING AND DEATH WILL NOT SILENCE YOUR DEFEAT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME AT THEM LET ME __**OUT**__!_

And Regulus, six glinting, buzzing knives catching his eye at once, heard his own voice. Tranquil as clotted cream, it noted, "I'll manage."

And then it was Severus's eyes in front of him. Severus unarmored in shredded, parched-moss colored linen, limp as his hair and utterly wrung-out. Severus and Evan, himself all rumpled and only about eighty percent drier. Severus and Evan in their not-quite-elf-clean bathroom. Evan's landscapes gracing the bathroom walls with soothing, rippling leaves and lapping waves. Rows of vials labeled in the cramped, spiky eye-bane known as Severus's handwriting, arming the shelves below the paintings with silent power and promise.

"I'll have that soak now, if it's still on offer," Severus rumbled exhaustedly into Evan's neck. His deep voice was on the muffled side, but the words were perfectly distinct.

"I should think," Evan said tartly, rubbing his back with long, slow strokes. He gave Regulus a reproachful but unvengeful look. "Out, you."

Regulus pulled his feet back under him (when had he fallen?) without a word, and turned to the door. But when he got there, he turned again, hesitant. "Severus?"

He got no reply but the turn of Spike's head, the peeling open of one wet-pebble eye.

"I… I don't think I can do that." He didn't even really know what that had _been_, besides a pants-wetting maelstrom.

"Of course you can't," Severus told him, in exactly that brisk, unsentimental voice that had so recently come from no throat at all. It was the most comforting sound in Reggie's world: if the cobra wasn't white-eyed and jumpy, absolutely nothing going on was worth worrying about. "In the first place, you may not, in fact, have time, and it's a different part of yourself you need to master and quiet. In the second, it's new to you, and I've been working out how to… how to manage since I was seven."

Regulus blanched. That was… that was awful. And very, very clearly still a work in progress. Which, how bad did that mean it been at the start? Also, would it take Reg that long? He didn't have that long!

"And finally, dimwit," Severus went on, his voice full of humor now. Evan smiled, shoulders dropping whole inches, and turned his face into his partner's sweaty temple. "_I _can't get _your_ mind right. I don't even know whether what you saw is what I experienced. Hell," he added, crudely mugglish. For once, Reggie's flinch at it was because he'd felt it, that snarling chin-up defiance that looked so unthinking and casual, from the inside. "I don't know if 'blue' looks the same to you or salt tastes the same, just because we both reliably recognize the stimuli. We sort and see the world through our minds, our memories and understanding and feelings, not from our senses directly. How can I tell you how to root and arm yourself? Why on earth would what works for me work for you?"

* * *

**Next**: Severus's new memory spell lets him risk being honest. Er. Well. Probably mostly honest?

**Credit** for 'getting your mind right' and (all future reference to headology) goes, of course, to Esme Weatherwax. And if you don't know Granny, I just can't help you. Only you can help yourself. Prob'ly with an ax or similar. ;)

**Geeky rambles**: Severus isn't a nihilist, or even the primarily the stoic he used to think he was (and Albus is? Or just pure pragmatist? But doesn't 'the greater good' mean he's ultimately trying to minimize the world's overall suffering? Discuss!) when what he mostly had to do was endure. He's a fundamentally a skeptic born under Janus. A Pyrrhonic skeptic, I think, based largely on Wiki, although after talking with a Philo major it's possible there's some pragmatic eclecticism and empiricism involved and the fear that if I want to be sure I'll have to _read some actual Descartes_ may be justified. Not actually my field, Valor.. there was a graphic intro for laymen/dummies floating around somewhere, right? ›.‹

And, for the record, taste, at least, is _not_ the same between people. Thousands of us coulda told the world that years, decades, centuries ago, if we hadn't had our experiences de-legitimized as 'you're such a picky eater, don't you know kids in Africa/China/Detroit/Atlantis are starving, eat your brussels sprouts and stop gagging like it's toxic waste, Calvin, don't be ridiculous, of _course_ it tastes like food.'* _Thank you, Science_: we now know there are at least three basic levels of, as it were, pre-loaded taste sensitivity (it's probably a spectrum, most things are), and that's before you take into account getting desensitized to sugar and burning your taste buds off with hot sauce and so on. Some interesting new research about what mothers eat prenatally affecting what kids like, but how much does preference have to do with taste-the-sense? Oh existential neurology mystique. (hearts)

*My favorite was when his mom told him it _was_ stewed monkey brains so he'd eat it, and then his dad turned green and couldn't touch a bite. I think we know which sides of the family the hellraiser and the vivid-imagination genes came from, and even though Dad eventually started using the tactic too, because he can learn, those two traits were not from the same side. XD I realize I'm diluting my point by using Calvin, since he was more wary of food he didn't recognize than overwhelmed or repelled by overstrong flavors or food that did not taste like something that should go in one's mouth, but... Calvin.


	17. Later, Still Dye Urn (d)

Just because Severus is a ranter doesn't mean he can't keep his mouth shut when he has to. Turns out he's had concerns about this pureblood promotion club thingy for a while now. No... longer than that.

His new memory spell lets him risk being honest. Er. Well. Probably mostly honest?

* * *

**Temporary notes:** Posting schedule is com_plete_ly off and I'm behind in PM responses, sorry. Should all equalize soon. I realized far too late in the day Thursday that it was Severus's birthday and had to do something about it.

On that note, for something completely different, please go check out said thing! It is 1) Filius's rather entertained accounting of the minutes for and then 2) the actual staff meeting following the Dueling Club Disaster in CoS. It would probably have been terribly grim and angsty, because basilisk, but Gilderoy followed Severus in and wouldn't go away. If you have any potions specifically configured to combat sparklecrack-induced headaches, bring them along, the faculty will pay handsomely. Yes, even Severus: he'd even used up his supply of _ingredients to make more_ weeks ago. (shakes head sadly)

* * *

Still Dye-Urn

"I've got a new spell," Severus announced drowsily. He was clean and dry again, curled up on Evan's chest on the couch in front of the fire. The night was warm for a fire, but sometimes you needed one anyway. Sometimes the play of light and the crackle of the wood was worth it, sometimes too warm was good. "At least, I think I have."

"Oh? Planning to share this largess?"

"Yes, I'd like to, if you wouldn't mind helping me test it."

"Test away," Evan said languidly.

Severus pulled his wand out and chanted, "_Tabula adamantium_."

"Like tabula rasa? I don't feel anything."

"Ha!" Severus exclaimed. "I _do_ have a new spell. This is the third casting in ten minutes, and you've said just the same every time."

Evan, before checking the clock, blinked into the dark hair. It smelled, unusually, of chamomile, valerian, sandalwood, and oranges.

Spike had been inches from another shaking collapse once Reggie was safely out the door. Letting someone else into his coping magic had forced him into bloody-minded perfection, but also been _awful._ It had made him more aware of everything painful when he'd been trying for anaesthetized, he'd said, and no emphasis on how awestruck and cowed Reggie had looked would dissuade him from insisting it had been mortifying.

Severus Did Not Like feeling exposed. Hadn't even before fifth year. No one had ever seen even in their own common room out of full academic sub-fusc, complete with boots and wand-holster. Not even when everyone else was in sleepwear and dressing gowns. Not even without his robes, for the first few months of the first year, the first few weeks of the next few. When he'd sat down outside on the Hogwarts grounds, he always, always had his back to a wall, a bush, a tree. On particularly bad days, he'd kept a mirror in his hand and put up with the jokes.

And while it was common enough for serious brewers to put on charms or topical potions that would protect them from splashes and fumes when they went into a stillroom, Spike used his version all day every day, put it in his soap. Minor hexes and jinxes slid off it, and he'd gotten a vicious satisfaction from the confusion this had caused in the halls.

Even though it was only translucent, and discolored him from hair to teeth. Even though the worse he looked the more casual everyone was about making a target of him. He preferred feeling armored over not actually being a walking target.

The fume-protectant was less of a problem for Evan since they'd graduated. It had stopped being about the daily grind of feeling like a fox in a dog pack, and was now largely about habit and Severus not being comfortable with eyes he didn't trust lingering on him. Which was fine with Evan, and probably intelligent, under the circumstances. He thought it was a bit sad, though, and there had a been a period when he'd wondered whether he was going to be absolutely compelled to get his hands all grimy ripping some grubby old muggle mill-rat limb from limb and muscle from bone.

Or possibly Filch. Or, at an outside guess, Lucius. Not Wilkes, though. Severus had never hesitated to slam Wilkes through the ceiling or turn those wandering hands into flippers or turn, for that matter, a hair over it. His bored and impatient (if edgy) reaction to Wilkes was, in fact, what had convinced Evan that the chisels and hammers that had hewn out his spike had at least been… sanitary.

Whatever the reason, though, Severus's cuffs were invariably skin-tight, much-buttoned affairs stretching nearly to his elbows, and he'd not only fallen in love with but stolen a pair of the stiff, knee-length Quidditch boots that everyone else complained about walking in. He ducked under his hair whenever he was embarrassed, and their bed was a curtained four-poster because he hadn't even glanced at one that wasn't, had walked past every single bed that didn't close off as if it didn't exist. Their windows had shutters and three layers of curtain, and he was the only person Evan knew, really the only one, who used book covers.

Good ones, too. They made everything look like that day's Prophet, and he put them on everything from his dreadful muggle fiction and poetry to the respectable and intensely boring_ Potioneer's Monthly_ and _Seasonal Stirring._

(Actually, the fiction and especially the poetry had been growing on Evan, and at a frankly embarrassing pace. But that, he was sure, was only because he was getting them in Spike's voice, or reading them to a snuggly Spike-in-his-lap. Usually a Spike, in either case, who was idly petting or nuzzling him, and might at any moment start absently dropping kisses that came closer and closer together until they both forgot there was a book in bed with them. Under those circumstances, he maintained, one could become fond of the _floo directory._)

And that was the mind Regulus had been inside. When it was already a half-inch away from breaking down in exhausted, overstimulated, intimidated tears. And the Gryffie thugs had given 'Snivellus' a _serious complex_ about tears.

And to gild the lily—no. _For gravy_, Severus had gotten a head full of Reggie's hurts. Taken objectively, taken as described, few of these had been particularly bad by Spike standards, or even by Evan's. But, as he'd said, Reg wasn't him. Reggie was less braced (who wasn't?), less cynical (ditto), more tender generally (this, conversely, was saying something).

Besides, memories never were objective. Reggie's were patterns of wounds that, though not so bad individually, had been often enough repeated to make ground-in, unhealing sore spots, and repeated a few more hundred times. Seeing them through Reggie's mind, Severus had felt them through his feelings, unable to apply his own jaded callouses.

It was a funny thing about nerves. Too much for too long and they'd go numb and indifferent, but just a little for too long and every touch was worse and worse.

And, for Severus, feeling with more fragile feelings than his own hadn't been the worst of it. As might be expected, Reggie's memories were also completely full of Sirius Sod Him Bloody Black (a terrible way to feel about a cousin one had spent half one's life thoroughly enjoying, but Siri had earned it, and how). And it wasn't just Severus's feelings about him; Reggie couldn't think about him without love and fury and despair and not-actually-all-that-secret longing for the brother James Potter had gotten and he hadn't, all mixed up. And how did you scrub that out?

So Evan had made an executive decision regarding the bath oils. It was a decision that was getting less unusual, he noticed unhappily, and what if Severus acclimated? If they just stopped working—or, worse, he started associating those smells with stress and strain? Voicing that thought would not improve matters. So Evan made sure to never use the same set twice, and silently worried.

He didn't think he would have lost ten whole minutes to worrying, though. And the time had indeed flown off somewhere. "I did? Just the same? Every time?"

"With variations on content, though not tone, at the drawling-sarcasm point, yes."

"That sounds like a replicable result. What is it? Some sort of memory spell, I take it."

Severus tilted his head to look up at Evan, very serious. "Yes. When we're done talking, you'll be able to decide whether you want to remember it."

"…Oh, no." If Spike asked him whether they were partners again, or if he was getting to be a burden, or—

"Not personal," Severus reassured him hastily. "Politics."

_"Oh._ Carry on," he said, magnanimous with relief, and then there was an interval wherein Spike evidently felt moved to express approval of Evan's priorities.

People thought they got used to the way Severus turned the sharp side of his tongue on them, thought they could acclimate. Then he did it again, and half the shock was no, no, they hadn't. That was not possible, and wouldn't have been even if he'd been less inventive. When he really lost his temper, he'd slash right into the tenderest places, the rawest wounds, the secrets that were supposed to be safely hidden, the insecurities that people were usually too polite to touch.

It was just the same when he used it in less venomous ways, the difference being whether you felt you were dying or wished you were. Either way you were struck (punched, lashed, stabbed, spiked) with the impression that death was going to be better than anything life had left for you, so spectacularly better that falling into it would be a weeping relief.

Later, Evan was humming all over with satisfaction, partly because Spike was curled up on him again, long limbs loose and warm. That was always lovely. After a while, as his mind floated contentedly back towards clarity, he remembered that there had been… what was it? "You wanted to talk about something, then?" he asked vaguely.

"I badly did," Severus said, his contented glaze turning to a headachy look, swollen lips pressing tight. Not just a bad omen, that last, but a minor tragedy. "Ev, has it occurred to you that out of everyone we know, you and Narcissa are about the only ones who aren't either already 'round the bend or, as in my and Reg's cases, accelerating exponentially towards it?"

"Being a bit harsh, there, Spike, aren't you?"

"No."

"No, really."

"_No, really._ Name me just one of us who… who's coping with… with the more… with the training Reg is getting without cracking up or rotting. Someone who wasn't a nutter or otherwise vastly disturbing already, cough cough Mulciber cough."

"You're supposed to actually cough."

"Sorrow." Evan bit his shoulder. Severus did shift and purr a little, but he pulled away, too, and said, "I mean it, Ev."

Evan sighed. Fine. He pulled himself up to a more seated position against the corner of the couch to show willing, and tugged Spike back. If they had to have unsettling conversations Spike thought he might not want to remember, he was _going_ to have his security blanket. So there."What do you mean, rotting?"

"I mean," he said grimly, "starting to like it."

Evan considered this. He, personally, was starting not to like this conversation. Severus reading out a Binns lecture could draw his hand to his wand, but he wasn't sure he wanted to listen now. "I like my job."

"You're not doing anything you wouldn't have been doing without him, except passing on the things you pick up."

"It's good to like one's job, Spike. Reduces ulcers and that."

"When one's job is killing people," Severus said, so bluntly Evan winced, "hurting people, tearing their will away, no, it isn't. That is not a good thing to like. Liking to fight is one thing. Liking to hurt and kill, that's something else, Ev. That's not what soldiers do. They do their job for king and country, or for a living, or to protect something. Soldiers are butchers, not addicts! It has to die, so you kill it, what's next, move on. When it's about _liking the blood on your hands,_ _wanting_ the screaming, something's gone wrong. Soldiers know it. They don't trust the ones who like it. I have references. Lots."

"You and your references." He nuzzled in, but he wasn't happy. "Spike, nasty work like that, you've got to cope—"

"Traditionally, one copes by seeing the enemy as inhuman monsters or inhuman targets, not inhuman entertainment. Look hard, Evan. What are we doing? Are we doing something? I was told we were doing something; I was told we were out to make changes. Most of them are silly changes, but a start is a start, one has to overcome inertia somehow, and God, Salazar, Merlin, and Livia know silly would be an improvement on the way the government runs now."

"You know she wasn't actually anybody's goddess of bureaucracy, right?"

"She is MY PERSONAL SAINT of administration-creative-beneficent-pragmatic-ruthlessness-and-poison shut up," Severus said haughtily, and Evan laughed. Severus unbent enough to crook a moderately shamefaced half-smile for a moment.

Only a moment, though, and then he went on, grim-eyed again. "Well, I see you working towards progress, and Luke and Narcissa and that holy terror Rookwood, and a very, very small handful of others. And the older lot are managing discreet, at least; who knows what they're up to. But most of us? The ones we know about? Most of us really, really, _really, _Evan, _really_ aren't making what could reasonably called useful steps towards a goal."

"It's preparation. In case the political influence path doesn't take. Besides, he wants the populace softened up," Evan said uneasily. "Unnerved enough to be receptive."

"Of course that's what he _wants,_" Severus said with a raised eyebrow, "because that's, how can I put this, _sane? _Strategic, anyway. _If_ one can get away with it. But is it what he's getting?"

"I hadn't heard it isn't," he said, careful.

"Talk to Narcissa. She's been putting out feelers, fretting to everyone about bringing a child into a world as dangerous as it's getting."

"I see." He was afraid he did.

Severus confirmed it. "We're developing a bad, bad reputation, Ev. He wants the populace softened up, wants to create a fear he can be the solution to? Fine. Well and good, in theory, but we're not getting away with it. And that's not bad luck. That's our waters fouled by the sloppiness of mental cases."

"You're talking about Bellatrix."

"Oh, for fu—for pity's sake," Severus said irritably, sitting up so that only their legs were tangled together. Evan blinked at his self-censoring. "Would everyone kindly please I beg you stop feeding Bellatrix Lestrange's megalomania. Yes, she's the poster witch, but she's not in the least alone or even the most loudly obsessive. She's just the prettiest."

Evan raised his eyebrows and said, "Lies. _I'm_ the prettiest."

This pulled an unwilling grin out of one side of Spike's mouth. "You're not the prettiest bloodthirsty cackler. Disqualified on at least two counts there, Rosier, I'm exceedingly pleased to have to tell yoummnnn..."

"I liked Schwartzrosiger," he mused dreamily, when Severus had pulled away from kissing him. He was absolutely the prettiest, although he was willing to share first place with Narcissa. Bellatrix was _beautiful,_ yes, but nobody with eyes like hers or Spike's could ever be called anything as mild as pretty, no matter what they looked like. He and Narcissa and Reggie could pass for harmless and even vapid any day they wanted to. Lucius couldn't, although his eyes were more eagle than swallow-the-world-whole. But he didn't seem to understand the value of being able to take more than one social stance, and was quite pleased to strike everyone as predatory and alert all the time."Or Schwartzrosen. Although, really, if anyone's a black rose here, it's you."

"I only called you that because you called me Prince-Snape," replied Severus, back (regrettably) on-task. "Focus, Slick, I've been more and more at sea on this for months. Please don't drift off when I've finally found a safe way to talk to you about it."

"Months," Evan repeated.

"I… yes."

"Understatement?"

"Possibly."

"Possibly?"

"A bit?"

"A bit like an inch, or a bit like a Quidditch pitch?"

"...Er."

"...A bit like the entire village of Hogsmeade, inclusive of the castle grounds?"

"...I think we can exclude the lake and forest..."

"Which stand for?"

"First and second year?"

Evan started rubbing his temples. He supposed it was promising that his battering ram had managed to keep whatever it was to himself. And he couldn't blame Severus for not having wanted to share burgeoning dangerous thoughts with him in their third year. They'd been friends then, allies and even partners, but not intimates. Not even bed-friends, although competent Slytherins didn't mistake lust or even afterglow for trust.

No, Spike hadn't trusted him then. Evan had seen the way Severus had looked at him when they'd been getting closer: the same way he'd looked at Evans. A starvation too desolate to be called hunger, the bone-chilled weariness of a street dog promised a place by the fire, eyes shifting in jaded desperation between the bone and cushion and all the steel-toed boots and pokers.

Evan knew how secrets could grow and grow in stagnant inertia until sharing them was unthinkable even when called for. Still. Seven years there'd been love of one kind or another between them, or the seeds of it, trust growing. Five, even six years of Severus knowing full well that when he was cut, Evan not only cursed but bled. He'd been biting something back the whole time?

"Elucidate, heart," he sighed. He knew Spike would hear it as a rebuke, a sign that Evan was having to remind himself that usually he liked Severus rather a lot, and that at least he was being trusted now. Good.

Severus wasn't the type to apologize, particularly when he thought he was right. He might feel terrible about making you unhappy, but if he couldn't think he'd been wrong, if there wasn't anything he knew he should have done differently, he couldn't and wouldn't claim actual regret. He looked like that was the position he was in now, and was letting himself sound it. "I can cite you books or scrolls from every century with whole chapters about the sweet and sloping spiral of dark-arts dementia—"

Yes, the alliteration was a definite clue. He was properly uncomfortable. And if he was building his case around _the dark arts are bad,_ he deserved to be. "That stupid, catch-all—"

"Well, if you don't want shorthand, then—"

"I regret opening my mouth," Evan mourned, letting them go back to normal, showing Spike they were all right. Having deserved to squirm, he'd let Evan see him doing it, and he was supplying what he'd withheld as soon as he'd invented a way to do it safely. That was good enough for Ev.

"As well you should." Severus gave him a deep, sweet kiss—and followed it with one brief enough to be a cheerfully, insultingly, obviously token effort to lessen his regret. Overdoing 'back to normal' a bit, but he was a congenital overdoer. Besides, after the way Evans had treated him one couldn't expect him not to grab at olive branches desperately and with both hands.

"Suppose," Ev proposed without much hope, "I apologize and say I am duly warned and you just—"

"Whole chapters, then," Spike steamrolled over him, grinning without even the grace to do it crookedly, "about the very strong correlation between a habitual use of malice-powered magic and a sharp turn towards decreasingly inhuman priorities. And about a similarly strong correlation between will-powered magic unstructured by verbal or physical foci and going a little or even a lot mad in ways that are called poetic justice by people who think it's wrong rather than just dangerous."

"Morgan's sheath, Spike, breathe."

Severus ignored him, adding pointedly, "And, finally, my entire school career may be best characterized as one long effort not to get murdered or worse in my sleep."

"Mulciber always was a bit er," Evan conceded.

"And Avery was happy to take his lead," he said sourly. "And let's not forget the highly political portions of the older years. Or most of Reg's year, come to that. Even after I'd accepted Evans was dropping me, even after you picked me up. Don't mistake me, I'm living proof that it was a school-wide epidemic, not a Slytherin one. Not even just a red-and-green one, the way people used to just stand about and watch," he spat.

Taking a deep breath with tight lips, he calmed himself, and went on. "But it _is_ an epidemic, this 'if you're not one of mine you're a chew toy, so squeak' attitude, and I see it worsening among our own. With consequences that are the opposite of what we're meant to be working towards."

"Does He know you're thinking like this?"

Severus turned wide, horrified eyes on him. "Are you mad? I have _no idea what to do_! There's a roc-sized flaw in our tactics, we're losing personal mastery and discipline—of which, as he's just reminded me, he's very much in favor. Additionally, we're weakening as an effective body and losing credibility with the public we want to win over! The way we're going, before long keeping our Marks hidden is going to be a mandatory safety precaution instead of making everyone feel smug about being in a secret and exclusive society. You think I'd bring that to him without at least a half-dozen possible approaches?"

_"Oh thank Salazar,_" Evan breathed, his hand closing bruisingly, shakily on Severus's thigh. Fret Spike too long and he'd go all Prince and Gryff-like and come home with bones broken and his eyes in the wrong places, snarling and seething because someone had ended his fight before he was done with it. You couldn't _do_ that with the man who insisted on being called their Lord. He wanted everyone stepping carefully, with him as well as in the world.

The grip wasn't enough, not with the hands smoothing over him maddeningly feather-light in hesitant reverence when he wanted them tight and safe and grounding. He had to tug him close again, bury his face in the long neck and fine, lank hair that were home. Always home, even if they smelled disconcertingly floral and fruity at the moment, more sweet and soothing than their usual spicy, woodsy enticement.

When his heart-rate was down, his curiosity rose to replace it. "But, Spike, if Reg thinks Bella's teaching him to shield his mind…"

"That's got to be bunk," Spike said dismissively, instantly business again.

Completely and instantly business again, although a bare second earlier his hands and eyes had been, for some strange Severan bizarro-reason that doubtless made sense in his head and probably had to do with his really stupid self-esteem deficit, treating Evan like a priceless treasure made of eggshell and soap bubbles that he couldn't believe had fallen into his arms.

That was a potions wonk for you. Yes, that happened—and now it's focus-on-this time! Keep up and add the armadillo bile on three, or doom! Ev mentally added Whiplash to the list of names to poke him with at appropriate moments.

"Lay you any odds you like," he went on, "it's something she's doing to trick him into being more open or get around his nerves."

"Granted," agreed Evan. "But it lays open the possibility that there are people one might really be advised to shield one's mind from, doesn't it. And if _he_ thinks so, wouldn't it be more like him to look into learning how to do it, more than seeing if anyone can learn to stop it?"

"That would be more his style," Severus agreed. "Well, he'd want to do both, but," he lowered his voice a little, possibly on pure instinct, "I think he might just... sort of... assume no one could get into him. Of course no doubt he'd be right," he added hastily, eyes evasive.

Evan eyed him, and decided he was probably right whether he was actually saying what he was right about or not. And that Evan had no reason know or even think about whether he was and the less said out loud about it the better. "So the odds he can't read minds _right now_ are…"

"Terrible."

"Let's assume worst case, seeing as that's your favorite, rainbows and unicorn dew that you are."

"It is my favorite," Severus agreed, pulled unwillingly into a smile. "I mean, what? No! I embrace reckless optimism with joyous and fervent stop laughing at me."

It took an effort and kissing and some ferocious concentration on the fact that worst case would actually be quite bad, but Evan did, eventually, stop laughing.

"If he can read minds," he got them back on topic, "how exactly are you planning to keep this private?"

Spike shrugged against his chest. "Maybe I won't, or can't, or haven't. Maybe I'll find out soon I'm already in trouble for not having come to him with ideas, or maybe he's working on it on his own and not discussing it with me. Which is more probable as it's in no way, as they say, my department. All I know is that he hasn't mentioned seeing, not that he hasn't seen. But it's certainly not something I _let_ myself think about with him, or, really, have time for."

He twitched a little in Evan's arms, and Evan twitched, too, in sympathy. From what he'd said, and that had not been one of his flaily, hyperbole-prone moods, that afternoon had been _intense._ Harder and faster than any session he'd had with Luke's dueling tutor, scarier than almost (_almost) _anything he'd faced from those Gryffindor thugs, and several times worse than both revising for and taking his DADA NEWT combined. He'd been immensely proud of himself when he'd staggered home, but the shape he'd been in even before Reggie had horned in had scared the breath out of Evan.

"Well," Evan said, "I choose to remember." Severus was visibly unsure about how to interpret that that for a teetering few breaths, looked at him uncertainly, then went completely limp on him for about the fifth time that evening, this time with relief. Evan tried not to laugh at him out loud again. "And I'll think about it."

"I hoped you would," Spike admitted, curling long fingers into his dressing gown. Despite the Rosier arms it was Spike's that was blue, in deep Ravenclaw colors with the Prince motto and white boar at the breast. Dark blue, while good on him, wasn't his very best color, and the thing would turn a wonderful wine color, but he was ridiculous and (tragically) refused to wear red. Evan's was also a family pass-down: meant to be used and so not an heirloom, but of quality too good to be called a hand-me-down. Preservation and repairing charms were wonderful things. His had a dark green leaves-and-thorns pattern, but no blue roses apart from the one in the Rosier crests on the lapels.*

"But."

Severus sighed. "Of course. But?"

"But," he went up on an elbow, "you'll remember this the next time you go insane and feel like asking me stupid questions."

There was a pause. "Not following."

Evan incompletely repressed a smile, looking down at him with a quirked eyebrow, and brushed a flop of hair out of his eyes. "Why do you think I let you decide I was your personal alternative to beating House problems over the head with a club bigger than you were?"

"Excuse _me,_ I used my wand."

"Which was bigger than you were."

_"Oi!"_

Evan grinned down at him (it really very nearly had been, the shrimp, and Evan was calling his titchy twelve-year-old self a shrimp as someone who'd played Seeker until the growth spurts had hit), and kissed his nose. "It wasn't for your gracious charm or rarified connections and enormous vaults, I assure you. Catching a problem before it explodes all over everyone is quite a lot of what you're _for_, O naja-my-porcupine."

Spike quirked his own eyebrow back, asking with a humorous glimmer, "Oh, is that what I'm for?"

"Gobbing venom in its eyes before it's close enough to need biting? Safest way. Someone ought to. Everyone else is too prissy."

"Thank god we're not Hufflepuffs; I suppose I would have been our year's Skunk."

"None of that," Evan told him, still smiling but not humorous. "I meant it. No one sees trouble coming like you."

"He said something like that," Severus said thoughtfully. "He said 'needle eye, glaive tongue.'" After a moment, he blinked in a remembering sort of way, and chanted, "_Amitte incantatum."_

"I should be glad he's noticed," Evan mused, because he very much wasn't. He didn't feel anything with Spike's spell dismissed, either. "You deserve to have it noticed."

"I hate that word."

"Also 'fair'?"

"Also 'fair.' You're not glad?"

"Are you?"

"You mentioned seeing trouble coming. I'd wager galleons to gingerbread: that owl's at the window."

"Yes," Evan agreed, sighing. "That's what I thought. …I don't think your spell did anything, Spike."

"It wasn't supposed to. I would have finished it with _cludo_ instead of _amitte_ if you'd decided to forget."

"Or reacted so badly that—"

"Yes."

Evan was silent a moment. "You'd do that to me?"

An eyebrow slid up. "If the other options were so bad that it was my only chance of keeping us both safe, and..." He groped a little, finishing lamely, "Us?" The uncertainty only lasted as long as the search for a word. Matte-eyed and implacable, he answered flatly, "In an iced second, Lance."

The cold-blooded curl of Evan's faint smile matched the stony flare of his nostrils perfectly. "Good answer, Naj."

He was quiet for a while, again. Then, curling tighter, he said lightly, "You know, when I 'picked you up when Evans was dropping you,' which is a dreadful way to put it, don't again, please, you're not a fallen knut, everyone said you only went along with it because the names and gingerness confused you."

Spike sent him up a rueful piece of twistedness that only got credit for being a smile because it had the handicap of being his. "'Everyone,' how shocking, is a moron and should stop trying to be witty," he said. "One needn't be a brewer or an artist to know the difference between peach and copper, thank you—"

"My hair is not _peach_."

"—and the open wound of your name was half your difficulty."

"Then I wish I'd been a Tom, Dick, or Harry," Evan decided. Severus barely had time to gag loudly at the idea before being flipped, uncompromisingly and with a shout of startled laughter, onto his back.

"There's a Dickon in Nottingham with a bit of a pash for me mam," he said later, idle and sleepy, into Evan's hair. "Got my wand from him. Nearly put me off me stroke there, Ev; I always did wish she'd met him first. Besides."

Evan waited.

And waited.

And finally pinched him. "Besides?"

Gruff and uncomfortable, Severus grumbled, "I'll have you as is."

Evan didn't smile into Spike's chest: the smile smiled him. "You'll have to introduce me."

"I'll do that," Severus said softly. Strong hands gently turned Evan sideways, and Severus wrapped himself over his back. It had all the promise of a glorious awaking, if also a stiff-backed morning, during which he was going to pay absolutely no attention to the mantel clock. Evan hadn't failed Spike; he'd understood him on the first go. If the clock was wrong, if there had once been an Evan who had fumbled the Snitch, it was kind and right of Spike to keep the shame of it from Ev. Because that Evan didn't matter: he was erased and well-erased. Gone. And there probably hadn't been one anyway, because he wasn't (he hoped) a _hundredth_ as empty-headed as he liked to look.

Now and for now, though, he, this Evan, himself, hefound himself pressed snug into the back of the couch with an arm for his pillow. There were still-bruised lips soft and slow at the join of his neck, an unmistakable nose tucked behind his ear, and wire-and-bone shoulders unsubtly shielding him from the door. The throw unfolded and settled over them, that dreadful, ratty old thing Spike had nicked from the Slytherin common room and would never hear of replacing because it was 'still perfectly functional.'

That was one of Evan's favorite fights to pick, when things were dull. But when one of the Fudge kids had trodden mud into it once, he had, smiling and polite and gently understanding, sent her home in tears.

* * *

* The crest of Muggle family of the same name (if there was any relation, the Rosiers didn't admit it) had yellow roses on a blue background. Blue roses, after all, aren't natural.

**Next**: The DADA and Divination Professors have _both_ managed to take themselves out, and Damocles Belby is struggling to get his grant renewed. Horace is sympathetic, and always likes to hear about old students, and do have another scone, my dear man, this pineapple marmalade is simply exquisite, don't you think? ^.^

**On Livia**: Severus is referring more to the character from Robert Graves' _I Claudius_ than to the historical Livia Drusilla/Julia Augusta.


	18. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

The Marauders hold a Council of War, to which Lily can't be invited for obvious(ly greasy) reasons.

* * *

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

James announced, "Something's up with Snivellus,"

"Water is wet," Sirius countered.

"I wish you lot would realize we've graduated," groaned Remus.

Peter just kept brooding at a bush.

They were hanging out in the Gardens. James's place was out, since Lily was never reasonable about Snape. Sirius had announced that, having been prodigiously productive (his words), he had completely earned the break of his choice, if not a full night out with loud music and oddly-colored drinks with fruit-salads in them, and was going to start chewing the walls if he didn't get out of his flat and under the sky for a while. Remus had suggested St. James so he could go grub around in the museum afterwards, but Pete had vetoed on the grounds of Too Crowded Too Noisy.

There had been something closed off and tight about his expression, but James hadn't wanted to press. Pressing Pete when he was uncomfortable already and Sirius was in the room was just asking for trouble. The more anxious Pete got, the more he fluttered and stammered and tripped over himself, and the more Sirius sneered at him, and it could just go on and _on_ like that. He wasn't like that when they went up against the Slytherins or played innocent with the professors, or even when they'd failed to and had to take it. Sirius rattled him, though, easily. And when James was too impatient, or the few times Remus had been disappointed in him, he'd crumbled almost instantly, and then it would be a miserable swing between sullen, humiliated retreat and horribly wet trying-too-hard for _days,_ until they could convince him they'd forgotten the whole thing.

They'd gotten some brilliant pranks out of Pete trying too hard, but one couldn't enjoy them properly with him sort of fumbling at one's robe-skirts the whole time. And he'd applaud _every little thing_ with this horrible forced grin, and it felt impossible to _stop_, like juggling goldfish-bowls, because if you said 'stop trying' he'd go into one of the retreats again and it would just set the clock back and you'd have to do the whole miserable thing over later. Really the only thing to do with a humiliated Pete was give everyone something else to think about, so he knew you all really weren't thinking about him anymore. That was harder come by these days.

He'd had that _push on this and I'll fall_ look, so James hadn't. He'd offered the idea of Richmond Park, which Padfoot had liked that one, but James had regretfully had to put in his own veto. On the grounds of deer acted funny around him when he was two-legged and spring was the wrong time to tempt fate, shut up, Sirius.

Sirius had, when he was done with it, dropped his shiningly-innocent face and said that Kew had plenty of nooks and crannies for the cagey explorer, and the plants had signs on so Remus could be boring and post-academic there if he wanted. So here they were, sprawled out on enormous, squashy poufs behind one of the greenhouses, and also behind a Not My Problem ward.

"Pete?" James prodded. "I said something's up with Snivvy."

"And I said water is wet," Sirius said helpfully.

"And _I_ said—"

"Oh, sorry," Peter blinked, shaking his head as to clear it. "Are we playing Most Obvious or Two Truths And A Lie?"

"I'm not playing at all," James said crossly. "He's gone completely off-pattern."

"I really can't believe you're still following him, Prongs," Remus said tiredly. "Don't you have better things to do?"

"You and Lily," James said, annoyed. "He's a symptom. He needs watching."

"According to you, he doesn't do much _to_ watch."

"Well, he does now."

"Say on, MacProngs," Sirius invited, lolling on his back on his pouf. It had been an innocent pinecone five minutes ago. While it would be a pinecone again when they left, James thought it was probably scarred for life now, or otherwise corrupted. Might be interesting to see what sort of tree would grow out of something Sirius had rolled and wiggled all over. Probably a cypress, or something else equally phallic.

So James told them. Odd comings, odd goings. Apparating away from St. Mungo's, but not back to his flat, and no trace of him at his so-called friends' places, or any of the shops or libraries. Showing up on his street later and later almost every other day, increasingly looking like he'd been through a wringer. Weight loss, dark circles, a straighter back and a stride with its last traces of scuff and sidle snuffed out.

"And now he's not showing up at his lab," he finished.

The other three looked at each other. "All right," Remus conceded, "something _is_ up. Sounds like when you were having Jenkins train you up to replace him on the sly, Pete."

"Still don't know why you didn't ask us to do it, Pete," Sirius put in, upside-down and still, six years later, sounding a little hurt.

"Oh, you know," Pete muttered, "thought I'd surprise you if I made it."

Which meant, James knew, _thought you'd laugh at me_. Bracingly, he said, "It was only surprising you'd gone for it under our noses, mate, not that you got in."

That got him a little smile, and Peter said, "Remus is right, it does sound like that."

"We thought you had a snogfriend," Sirius said reminiscently. "Dead disappointing, till you got Sniv in the face that time." Remus kicked him, and he said, "What? It was. Glad to have you on the other bat and all, Tailspin, but we were hoping for eventual wanking material."

"Stay classy, Padfoot," Remus said dryly.

"You'll note you didn't get any even when I was dating," Pete crossed his arms sulkily, "seeing as I'm not a pig."

"And knew it would get back to her," Sirius noted.

"Due to Sirius's excess of tact," James chimed in.

"And Jamie's history of suave discretion in matters of the heart," drawled Sirius.

"MYYY LOOOOVE IS LII-IIIIKE A RED, RED ROOOOOOSE," bawled James happily, on cue. Because she _was_, all prickles and silk. And who did she spread her petals for? That's right, it was _him_, not any nasty, greasy-voiced, vicious little snakes, and there was their own rosehip swelling gorgeously apace to prove it.

"And hoped to get laid a second time," Sirius nodded approvingly, deaf and insensible to James's well-justified reverie, the philistine. "Sensible."

"I hate you all a little right now," Peter informed them, bright red.

"What did I do?" Remus asked, bemused.

"Wouldn't leave you out, Moony," he said, managing a grin and a fluttering of his sandy lashes.

"Well, Snivvy," Sirius said. He had the attention span of a chipmunk when he saw no reason not to indulge it. It was often useful when they were already off-topic. "I don't expect he's gearing up to try out for Holyhead, as amusing as that would be."

"I thought you said he gave you a challenge when they put him on," Remus said, vague.

"Er, Moony, the Harpies are an all-witch team," Pete told him, since James and Sirius were busy staring in such sad despair at his ignorance they couldn't even muster up the indignation to protest the obvious fact that they couldn't possibly ever have said any such thing ever ever ever.

"Oh," Remus nodded, indifferent. "That makes sense." Seeing they were still staring at him, he added placidly, "With the name and all."

"MOVING ON," Sirius yowled tragically. "So Sniv's finally slipped. Anybody found a way to blind-follow an apparition yet?"

"Siri, we can't just go ahead and follow him on our own anymore," said Remus patiently.

"Er," James blinked, as blank-faced as his best friend. "Why not?"

"Well, we did sort of promise not to."

"I don't remember this," Sirius said. "When was this?"

"This was the bit where Dumbledore said he was sure we would be a great help if he could _rely on us_ and we said he could."

"And that means we can't go after Snivellus when we finally have _proof_ he's up to something?" James demanded.

"_Yes,_ Prongs. Because haring off on a lead without reporting in is the opposite of reliable."

"Besides," Pete put in, looking a little twitchy at having to argue, "if he's in it as deep as you think, Jamie, following him without backup and a plan could end up with somebody dead."

"Oh, come on, we can handle—"

"Hold up, Prongs," Sirius said reluctantly. He had the _oh Merlin I hate my head sometimes_ look on, so James paid attention. That look usually preceded his more insightful and better-thought-out moments. "I hate to say it, but Pete's almost right. Yeah, we can handle ourselves, but that makes a fuss, and Dumbledore seems to be anti-loud-fusses for the moment. And you can see why, right? If we're the ones to start making them, we're the ones who look bad."

James looked at him, proud and resentful. It was _not_ what he wanted to hear. But after the scare Sirius had given them, nearly turning Moony into his own even worser worst nightmare just because getting within half a mile of Snivellus turned his brain into a box of lit fireworks even when sodden, James had resolved to encourage any evidence of maturity Sirius showed.

_Any_ evidence. Even when it did make him sound sort of Slytherin.

"Thanks, Paddy," Moony said, with a little sigh-and-smile at the oh, fine, not a traitor _really,_ James supposed. It was lightly relief-flavored. "That was most of what I meant."

"I'm not Irish," sniffed Sirius for the twelve thousandth time. He'd never managed to get comfortable with other people's sincerity, which was probably why he and the Rose of the World (James made a note to call her that to her face, but not when she was holding her wand) got on each other's nerves whenever they tried to talk about anything other than work.

James dug into the ground moodily with the toes of his trainers, rather wanting to dig in with his antlers, too. "All right, report it in, then, but he thinks we're biased. What if he doesn't even believe me?"

"Tell Moody," they all three of them chorused.

"In fact," Sirius added, "make sure Moody's there when you tell him the first time. Saves argument. At least," he winked, with that long, sly grin that had always had three-quarters of the school doing their level best to snog it (and Snivvy doing his to claw it) off his face, "saves _you_ argument."

* * *

**Notes**: I had a whole different thing going on with Peter's fifth-year fawning until about five minutes ago. Then I re-read the Snape's Worst Memory scene again to check it, and I'd remembered it wrongly, remembered Peter being much wetter and more icky than he was. Then the James voice explained his side to me completely differently (wow does it not excuse him), and um... sometimes these things happen during the final edit? o.O


	19. The Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade

Hogwarts is out two professors and the Wolfsbane Project is very unlikely to get its grant renewed. Horace is sad and sympathetic, and would also like another scone.

* * *

The Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade

"I must say, Damocles, you seem to be making wonderful progress," Horace beamed, loading up his fifth scone with pineapple jam. "And on the lycanthropy curse! I should never have believed it if you'd told me five years ago; never."

"Aye, well, I only hope we'll go on progressing," his former student, one of his first, said grimly. "Way I hear it, them up at the Ministry are sounding _satisfied_."

"But you aren't?"

"Poor sods'd have to be mad to take it as is," Belby said. "And enough of them will be, if they take it for long. Bone spurs are the very best of it."

"They are often in most desperate situations, you know," Horace pointed out.

Belby snorted, "Know it better'n you by now, I should say. One of my ducks had to chase one applicant out with a silver rake, I hear—although Patil is an exaggerator. I expect the boy just threw a jar at his head."

Horace smiled widely, and topped up Belby's teacup. "And how is my scrappy black lambkin?"

"Taking his vacation time for once, thank Merlin." Belby rolled his eyes. "Thought I'd have to bully him into it, but I expect that pale-eyed fop of his did my work for me."

"Oh, dear," Horace said, fixing him with curious, sympathetic eyes. "Severus always was prone to overdoing it."

"I never noticed him being prone to dropping things before," Belby growled, and netted himself a stare of gooseberry-green surprise. He nodded. "Oh, he's all right around the cauldron, but we're going through twice the coffee—and three times the mugs. And if he wasn't quick with his wand we'd have lost the precision omnioculars out the window last week when Lovegood padded up behind him on those cat feet of hers with a question."

"What were they doing by the window?" Horace asked with a blink. Even precision omnioculars could be used to see at a distance, of course, but what they were _for_ was seeing small.

"They weren't."

"Dear, dear," he clucked, eyeing the last scone. "Well, the Rosier boy was an excellent influence on him in their last few years. We'll have to leave it to him, won't we? I don't suppose you've been overloading him, Damocles?" He slid a knowing, nudge-nudge-wink-wink twinkle at Belby, quite different from the cheerful blue one of his employer. "Get in as much work as possible before the funding's pinched?"

"Not I," said Belby, shoving the plate at him with a jaundiced look.

Horace's heart fell, although he took the scone with a pleased smile and piled jam and cream on it with every evidence of complacent enjoyment. If it wasn't overwork at the lab, and since he hadn't heard anything to suggest that the most reliable of the Black girls was having another, er, health crisis, then it almost certainly was a Sign. He'd have to pass it on, and he wanted _nothing to do_ with Any Of That.

"Slow and steady and take the leaps in stride as they come, or you're scraping werewolf off the ceiling. And coffee, too. More time, that's what we need. And more coffee. Not a rush job." He eyed Horace with a sort of jaded hope.

"And it would be a shame if you couldn't get it," Horace agreed, with real indignation. Millie Bagnold had always struck him as short-sighted, although of course Ministers so often were. One persuaded a fearful and badly-divided public to vote for one with charisma and bright, broad strokes of meaningless energy, not clarity or nuance.

But the Wolfsbane project was wonderful. Could be legendary, even if it was only the first toddling step to a cure. It could, if it succeeded, open up a whole new population to enrich the wizarding world, free of the fear on both sides that now kept all that strength and sensitivity resentfully and insecurely caged away. Only think of what werewolves could do for the Aurors! For the exploring division at Gringotts! And so little could hurt them so badly that they couldn't come in to work the next week.

Yes, one unquestionably wanted them on one's own side, pissing out. Look at that odd Lupin boy, with his shuttered eyes and quick mind and that soothing way about him. Imagine what he could have been if he hadn't grown up living on his nerves, contorting himself into a twisted-up shadow to keep the silence and protection of boys who could be as vicious as they were clever, strong, resourceful, and self-absorbed. Or if his parents hadn't ransacked his birthright questing for miracles. Who else had as much potential as he'd had, that no one knew about, without even what advantages Dumbledore had been able to give him? It wasn't only a shame, it was a shameful waste.

"And I shall say so, of course. But…"

"Oh aye," Belby sighed. Even Ravenclaws knew it, by his age: even when there wasn't a price, there was always a catch.

"It's a matter of timing, my boy," Horace said, some regret in his smile. "I _shall_ say so, make no mistake. But while I doubt Dumbledore will take much convincing to add his weight to the argument, I should be very much surprised if he has room on his plate for it in the next few weeks."

"I did hear as you'd lost your DADA twit again," Belby said, refilling both their cups. "Starting to think accepting the job shows a lack of qualification, I am."

"We lost more than her, this time, alas," Horace said gloomily. "You wouldn't have thought a Defense and a Divination professor would be fools enough to go for a tryst in the Forbidden Forest, would you? One would at least expect enough foresight to ask young Hagrid which areas are crawling with giant spiders."

"Well, that clinches it," Belby said, when he'd finished staring and grimacing and shaking his head in disbelief at _how stupid can you get_. "It _must_ be a curse, and a strong one at that."

"Yes," Horace said sadly, his eyes falling away. "I suppose it must."

* * *

**Next**: Albus has (see above) two posts to fill. He doesn't like conducting interviews at his brother's inn, but that's where the Divination candidate is staying, and the Defense candidate didn't mind. Albus doesn't consider the latter a serious contender, being very young (and, as Albus recalls, a trouble-magnet and liable to castle-rocking temper tantrums), but interviewing Slytherins is always good fun.


	20. The Hog's Head, Hogsmeade

Albus has two posts to fill. He doesn't like conducting interviews at his brother's inn, but that's where the Divination candidate is staying, and the Defense candidate didn't mind. Albus doesn't consider the latter a serious contender, being very young (and, as Albus recalls, a trouble-magnet and liable to castle-rocking temper tantrums), but interviewing Slytherins is always good fun.

Or: Severus's job interview doesn't net him _exactly_ the fish he was trawling for...

* * *

Ready?

(not ready! not ready! eeeee!)

* * *

The Hog's Head, Hogsmeade

"I confess," said Albus, "that your owl surprised me, Severus."

"Did it?" the boy asked. He wasn't trying for amazed, Albus noticed, or even surprised. A good choice: he did skeptical much more naturally.

"Should I not have been?"

Severus shrugged. "I would have expected Professor Slughorn to anticipate me, if you didn't."

"Why so?" He did enjoy interviewing Slytherins, and got the chance so seldom. Teaching wasn't the sort of ambition most of them understood as valuable. Too, the difficulties associated with his most often open position tended to warn them off.

When they did apply, their struggle between Never Volunteer Information and the necessities of auditioning for a job was always good fun. As a student, he recalled from talkings-to past, Severus had seesawed savagely between pressure-cooker taciturnity and explosions of the bare and brutal truth as he saw it.

But, of course, their meetings had never been under the best of circumstances. Horace had maintained staunchly, if without enthusiasm, that what Albus had seen was nowhere near the whole. More, it was only a certain portion of the students (if a large one) who thought darkly of the child, not any of the portraits or elves or the younger students in his House he could easily have bullied. A strong mark in his favor, although he'd made much of the faculty uneasy and aggravated. Filius had liked him almost without reserve, though, and Minerva and Pomona had approved of his bloody-minded (Minerva), tenacious (Pomona) refusal to give up in their classes.

Severus frowned a little, as if Albus's surprise was very odd, and offered with an air of attempting diplomacy, "Perhaps if you'd tell me what surprised you I'd be better able to answer."

"Well, to begin with, my boy," Albus began, and immediately twinkled. There it was already, a tiny flash of temper in the dark eyes. He picked up Severus's CV. "Why interrupt such a promising potions career?"

Now Severus looked more naturally surprised. "Interrupt?" he repeated. "I'd hoped to come to some arrangement with Professor Slughorn regarding stillroom access. He used to let me brew during Slug Club meetings, so I'm sure we could come to an agreement. I understand that marking and lesson preparation are time consuming, but I've never needed much sleep. And it would be disingenuous to pretend that the Hogwarts library and equipment aren't a draw."

"But why leave Master Belby, Severus?"

The boy looked thoroughly cynical and, to his credit, also depressed. Of course, he had more reason than most to want the curse of lycanthropy defeated. "I might have waited until we know whether the grant will be renewed before applying, if I didn't think you'd want to fill the post as quickly as possible. But there's not as much hope to hold out as Belby wants to think. _We_ don't think the potion's viable for distribution yet, but I'm afraid the Ministry will. And he won't be able to afford stipends enough for us to live on without that grant."

"Ah, yes, Horace did say," he murmured, and dug out a Honeyduke's tin. "Pepper Imp?"

"Hm," Severus mused, quirking a nearly conspiratorial eyebrow at him. "The discourtesy of rejecting an offer, in opposition to the risk of setting your beard on fire. An interesting assessment tool."

Albus laughed, and had one himself before putting the tin away. He blew the spout of flame safely into the corner (possibly sterilizing it), and allowed himself to form it dragon-shaped.

"Yes, all right," Severus said, flushing a little. That was more the child that Albus remembered: quick to see nuance and quick to think himself attacked, and always feeling it keenly. "I'm sure you _do_ have more experienced applicants. But I wanted to offer my mindset. I'm told it's an unusual one, even within Slytherin, and I think a year's practice in it could be useful for…" His lips tightened. "It's getting tense out there," he finished simply.

Albus wondered whether he knew how true that was. "Since you raise the matter of your mindset, Severus," he said mildly. Severus gave a very small and quiet laugh and a ruefully acknowledging half-shrug. A good sign, Albus noted, but only looked on with benevolent interest until his candidate realized he was supposed to talk.

"It's a matter of vision," the boy said. He'd stuck to his point instead of taking the bait and getting defensive about his temper or the thousand poisonous rumors that had choked his schooldays. Albus was moderately stunned. He was less stunned to notice the ironic and, again, nearly conspiratorial quirk with which Severus acknowledged his reaction.

"Are you a visionary, Severus?" he asked, smiling with a benign twinkle and a leaden swoop about the heart region. Some of those rumors had been absurd, and some credible to the point of inevitability.

Severus sat back in Aberforth's hard and hard-used chair with a frown, evidently giving this some hard thought. "I wouldn't have called myself that," he said slowly, after a brief interval during which Albus amused himself with an ice mouse. Two, rather: one he ate, and he let the other run about on the chipped varnish of the table between them. "Can you..."

The mouse began to melt quickly in the stuffy nearly-summer air of the second-floor room, struggling on slushy feet. Severus looked at it, and then at Albus. His building expectation quickly became incredulous, then a veil of bitter resignation drew over his eyes. He drew his wand and vanished it. A narrow-eyed, low-lidded look struggling between suspicion and judgment, and then he finished, a little harder about the mouth. "Can you be a visionary and a pragmatist?"

"All the great ones are," Albus assured him. That reaction, too, had been a good sign. Minerva and Pomona had both called him out for cruelty verbally at that point in their interviews, while Filius and Silvanus had felt it necessary to make a comment about the mice not being real animals, of course. Bathsheba had picked it up, dusted it off, and eaten it, saying something vague about a sudden inexplicable bad taste. She, he recalled, had also been Slytherin.

The question, though, made him sad, rather. Melancholic, at least, in a way that wasn't really appropriate to the setting. Still, such reminders were always as tempting as they were painful. He always wavered on them, if just for a moment, even now.

Severus eyed him, seeming to sense the looming minefield. "I also," he said, veering away from it effectively but without grace, "wouldn't call myself paranoid."

Albus choked on his mint. The boy nearly rose in alarm, but settled back to wait him out in tolerant, only slightly sulky _yes, fine, laugh at me, I knew you would_ resignation, once it was evident he wasn't in any real difficulty. When he had conjured himself a glass of water and drunk it, Albus said, slightly hoarse from all the coughing, "In that case, Severus, you might be interested to see your student evaluations."

He got back a wry and crooked half a smile. "I doubt they'd surprise me, Professor. But there's a difference, I would say. A paranoiac notices things that could be strung together to tell a story of trouble and then believes it, no matter how unlikely it is. I rarely see only one story, and I'm a brewer. I don't pin my expectations on one possible outcome unless it's by far the most probable, and I always, always, _always_ prepare to be wrong."

"But you do make interesting connections, Severus," Albus said. "I don't believe I've heard that one before."

"But you must live it, Professor, as an alchemist," Severus said, tilting his head curiously. "An unknown quantity or combination always has the potential to do something disastrous. If you assume it will, you don't make discoveries. If you assume it won't, you go through a lot of lab equipment, and sometimes limbs. Even more so with alchemy than ordinary potion-making. The proper course is to use sturdy equipment, have spares and cleaning supplies handy, ward yourself, record your planned procedure exactly, do the experiment, and if it turns the ceiling furry, write down the result and work out why. Isn't it?"

Albus agreed that it was. "And you want to teach the children to apply that to DADA?"

"I want to teach them to apply it to defense generally," Severus said, his mouth a little grim. "Observation, the rules of logic and critical thinking. The application of research. Noticing there's an unusual bulge in someone's pocket, what could make that shape? Are they the sort who'd think to disguise the shape of something in their pocket? Are they known to associate with anyone who is? Someone's got an odd look, what known factors would suggest an innocent or dangerous explanation. Noticing that _every century_ has reams recounting the effects of using the Dark Arts, but only in every third or fourth generation. And what could make _that_ shape."

"What _could_ make that shape?" Albus asked, smiling.

Severus shrugged again. "The explanation that seems most likely to me is a cycle of grandchildren and great-grandchildren not… not understanding the reality of their ancestors' difficulties, not understanding the strength of the causal relationships, and making old mistakes again. I don't insist on it, though."

He nodded. He had seen that happen, and not only about the Dark Arts. His friend Nicholas could be rather waspish on the subject. "You said 'a year's practice,'" he mentioned.

"I did." There was another brief pause. Albus let himself enjoy it, increasingly visibly, until Severus remembered again that he _was_, under these circumstances, supposed to offer clarity. "Comes under 'prepare for the worst,' Professor," he said, with a little shrug that only moved his eyebrows. "Maybe there is a curse, maybe there isn't. But the body of evidence suggests that attempting to stay long in the post is a bad risk." He looked rather like he wanted to add _no offense _for a moment, then set his jaw stubbornly against it.

"Honest as always, Severus," Albus mused. Severus just looked at him steadily, composed again, comparatively open and entirely unapologetic. "Just one or two more questions, then," he said. Neither of them would have to do with the very recent graduate's actual qualifications. His NEWT was still the best verifiable testament to his facility with the subject matter, and it had been more than high enough to get him in the door.

Asked the first question, Severus made a loud noise of disbelief. "Are you joking?" he asked incredulously. "_Yes_, I have experience with children. I thought Professor Slughorn was at least on the pulse enough to know that! If you hire me I ought to get _back wages_ from all the tutoring, good grief. And you can't seriously think—I mean, the faculty didn't honestly believe that Evan Rosier did all his prefect work himself!"

"Didn't he?" Albus asked, smiling with real amusement now.

"Oh, _please_. Er. Professor. Get up in the middle of the night to settle squabbles and nightmares? Rosier? If he doesn't get about nine hours uninterrupted he walks into walls and hexes all the witnesses. And he was far, far too liable to artistic reveries to keep an effective weather eye out on fifty-odd little sneaks and insecure bullies and walking nerves at the best of times. During OWL and NEWT study? Not a chance. He went to meetings, he swanked the badge in public as appropriate, and he had the conversations I told him needed more tact than I had or more weight than a penniless halfblood could give them. The end."

"Dear me! We considered making him Head Boy, you know," he said, to see how hard the boy would explode. Severus's feelings about who his year's Head Boy _had_ been were common knowledge.

"I wish you had," he muttered, eyes black in more than color. Then he sat straighter in the chair and repeated more distinctly, "I wish you had. That job's more inter-House diplomacy than micromanagement or babysitting. He would have been excellent at most of it, and Narcissa and I would have gone on filling in the gaps his counterpart didn't."

"Slytherin teamwork," Albus mused. What a strange concept.

"Slytherin values a social orientation and creative problem-solving, as Gryffindor values individuation and direct engagement," said Severus. "Slytherin is supposed to be as much about teamwork-when-called-for as Hufflepuff is. The difference is their emphasis on putting one's back into it as opposed to our focus on moving thoughtfully. And that they don't question whether working together is actually the best way to go about any given task."

Albus could see he believed it, but smiled, "Well, I am encouraged, Severus. A compliment to Gryffindor, and you got it out very nearly without grinding your teeth!"

"I'm glad you feel that way," the boy said, droll, "I think, but it wasn't a compliment. It was an observation, or, if you prefer, a distillation of research, without assignment of positive or negative value. That's what I do."

"Do you? Why not Ravenclaw, then?"

"_I_ don't know, the stupid Hat wouldn't let me," he groused, an old grudge overtaking his face. It made him look very young, not at all professional, and much more familiar to Albus. There was a spark of humor in it, though: it was the look of someone for whom complaining was performance art and who expected barely-veiled appreciation or possibly score-cards, not of someone who crawled into bitter bottles alone. "Said I had nosing-in bones and would probably set their tower on fire three times a week shooting fire extinguishers at other people's experiments that would otherwise be fine. Whatever the hell _that's _supposed to mean." He rubbed his nose resentfully, scowling.

And then, Albus recalled, the two of them had argued silently on the stool while hundreds of young stomachs growled. It had been several long minutes before the Hat had started smoking along its brim and quickly consigned him to the snake pit. They had both, as he remembered, had a distinctly _so there_ expression as the boy had walked to his new table. "But they don't really work like that, you know, the Houses," he told him gently now.

Severus slid Albus a dour _I obviously know that, who do you think you're talking to_ look that nearly made him laugh again. "Reality never works like it's meant to. That doesn't mean the ideals don't exist, or should be binned. It just means keep trying, try harder, work smarter, pull more people into your…." He smiled a little again, still crookedly, "vision."

"Speaking of ideals," Albus said, taking another ice mouse. Severus looked at him for so long, waiting for the question with only curiosity in his eyes, that Albus gave up on delicate suggestion. This was unusual, and, even more unusually, he wasn't in the least sure what, out of the several possibilities, to make of it. "I admit that this isn't a question generally in an employer's purview, Severus. However, as you observe, it _is_ 'getting tense out there.' And I must ask you—"

"—In view of the hyperactive rumor mill, fueled by gold cap mushrooms stewed in fwooper blood, which is commonly referred to as Sirius Black's brain…" Severus inserted, flat and unamused, anticipating him. No one (even when tearing their hair out over his lack of good sense, social judgment, self-mastery and penmanship) had ever said the boy was dim.

"I'm afraid I must take a certain interest in the politics of any adult I consider bringing into the school at this time," he said, as unchallengingly unapologetic as Severus himself had been minutes ago.

Severus gave him a twist of a smile under the oldest, bitterest look Albus had ever seen on a face that young. Albus had lived through battles and shellings, Minerva's first year on the faculty, that appalling near miss of young Remus's, poor Hagrid's expulsion, Minerva's first year as his deputy, the caging, dwindling, and forgiveness of his brightest love, and his brother's undying blame.

For the first time, the Slytherin picked up the teacup Aberforth had perfunctorily plonked in front of him when escorting him in. He drained it, pulled out a pocket watch of some dull metal, and sat in silence for precisely the longest amount of time Veritaserum could need to take effect (if it wasn't prevented) before putting the watch away.

"An estimable gesture, Severus, but it's only tea," Albus said, smiling a little sadly.

"Is it? You let me wait," Severus said bluntly. Albus wondered whether that was the placebo effect or just Severus being Severus.

"A demonstration of good faith should always be respected."

"Mm," Severus said, eying him dubiously. He rearranged his shoulders and met Albus's gaze directly.

To the old Legilimens' surprise, he didn't have to work at not falling in; his mind's gaze skated over an impression of dense smoke tangled so smooth and tight he nearly bounced. Unsophisticated, untutored, and unintended. In fact, he had the feeling Severus was trying to communicate with him, from behind that slickly snarled surface of guardedness and generalized mistrust.

He'd never seen it before, but it could have been there as far back as the boy's first year, as far as he knew. Every other time they'd met, Severus had been wildly distraught or sunk in sullen, miserable defeatism. Albus had never, in fact, seen him meet anyone's eyes, except to lock together in hatred with his enemies, for longer than an agonizingly incensed or disinterestedly dull split second that no one had to be a mind-reader to feel on their skin as a silent scream.

Meeting his gaze now, Albus could see that he was that rarest and often most unfortunate of animals, a natural whose talent wasn't mere latent potential. Like every occlumens who was introspective or an artist, his shield was unique and complex, full of sensation and interest. Like every life-activated natural's, it was strong. Nevertheless, it wouldn't have taken nearly as powerful or experienced an old hand as Albus to punch or even to slip through.

But the boy was barely graduated. From where Albus was standing (somewhat creakily, alas), he was barely weaned. He couldn't know what he was trying to open himself to.

So Albus listened only with his ears and the eyes of his body. They generally sufficed.

"I'm not political," Severus said. "There's no _point_ in my being political. I'd be bad at it."

Albus twinkled hugely at him at that. Severus sent back a twist that might have been a smile if had been less wry, making no bones about it.

"I hear all the arguments, Professor," he went on soberly. "I have friends all tangled up in the Ministry, and I have friends treading their pure blood like water against the riptide of change and, oh," he gestured wryly, "loud music, and power lines crossing the ley lines and so on. And they're terrible complainers, as rich people are." He shot Albus an ironic look and added, "savin' yer presence, guv."

"Oh, quite, quite," Albus chuckled. He thought about taking another pepper imp, as a winking mock-reproach this time rather than a tool of curiosity. Despite the current display of confidence, though (a calming draught before coming in, perhaps?), he knew the boy to be nearly the dictionary definition of skittish, and not just because Horace and Pomona kept telling him. Another gout of flame would be overkill with any Slytherin worth his salt, and this one wouldn't believe it was a joke.

"And I think that nearly every problem with our society and attitudes and laws that I've ever heard anyone point out is a genuine problem. But _absolutely _every solution I've ever heard either side of the argument propose is ridiculous, short-sighted, poorly conceived, and much more likely to have a hugely unfortunate ripple effect than to do a lot of good. So," he shrugged, "until I hear or have an idea that's likely to do less harm than letting things stand—which you'd think wouldn't be as hard to come up with as it is…" He shrugged again, making a face. "Politics is for people who think they know the answers, not the ones who just see an endless mirror-maze of questions. I try to anticipate the problems, and come up with better tools to apply to them. That's as political as—"

Albus's watch chimed.

"—I get," Severus finished, and blinked.

"What excellent timing," Albus beamed. "That will be my next interview, I believe. I have two posts to fill this year, you know," he added, and, reminded, let the sorrow sweep gently over him again. Death was nothing to fear, but it separated friends. Nor would an an Acromantula's territory have provided a pleasant route.

"I heard," Severus said, wincing, and stood. He didn't offer his condolences, but Albus felt the wince was a more honest speaker of sympathy than any polite words would have been, from him.

When they were both up and on the same side of the table, Albus took both the boy's hands, not just the offered one. "I have others to speak to, you know, and I may ask you or others for a second meeting before making anyone an offer. But, Severus…"

He looked earnestly, warmly into the blackly-endless, roilingly misted-over wells of eyes that were walls and not windows. "Whether, in the end, it's yes or no, I've very much enjoyed speaking with you today. Professor Flitwick has always said you have a fine mind, and I shall be delighted to let him tell me that he told me so."

Severus's eyes widened, just slightly, and his sallow skin turned rather pink.

Albus twinkled brightly and mischievously, with a bit of innuendo in it to see if he'd redden more. He did, and bits of his face he was trying to hold still twitched, but it looked like confusion rather than embarrassment. No young crush on the teacher who'd liked him best, then, ah well. Life couldn't be all fun, and Albus supposed it was good for Minerva to win a wager once every few years.

But there was this: _I'm not political_ was a truth, crafted to pass through Veritaserum, which told Albus _nothing. _Had been intended not to. _Neither side has my enthusiasm_ didn't mean he'd been able to avoid a choice. These careful truths, Albus greatly feared, told him what his young followers' report didn't (despite their most enthusiastic certainty) prove. The painstaking nothings told him everything.

But on how many levels could this Slytherin think? On how many would he expect Albus to? He'd _assumed_ Veritaserum, just for an interview for a teaching post. Or had he, rather than assuming it, meant to signal that he ought to have had to? Could Albus have been that lucky? Probably not (almost certainly not), and yet... what was ever accomplished in the world, except by serendipity or hope? I know that you know that I know that you know that I know that you know…

It was the head of the Order who gambled on, still holding the cipher's eyes and hands tightly. "I should enjoy talking with you again, Severus," he said gravely. "If you should ever care to come by and chat," his hands tightened. The black eyes widened slightly again before narrowing in focus to match Albus's intensity. He said, slow and quiet and with emphasis, "You will always find my window open."

Below the polite expression, Severus's pulse pounded clearly and suddenly in the unveiled vein at his throat. It jumped so hard and fast that Albus could feel it hammer like a rainstorm in the rawboned fingers in his iron grip. There was one breath more shallow than the rest, a moment's tremor in the thin lips, a vulnerable, unsure flicker in the shine of the eyes that might, really, have been a merely a flicker in Aberforth's most economical lighting. One deeper breath, while Severus met his eyes piercingly, searching as deep as the body's eyes could touch. Finally, finally, a steadied gaze and the most miniscule of nods.

Then Severus took his hand back and polite-smiled at him with the kind of pitying respect that was dutifully put on for batty old relatives. In a perfectly normal humoring-the-senile voice, he asked, "Beg pardon, Professor—did you mean 'door' just then?"

"No doubt, no doubt," Albus said cheerfully, and let him go.

* * *

**Next**: Severus hears something he shouldn't. YES. THAT. READY?! GO!

**Credits**: "Everything that is done in the world is done by hope." —Martin Luther.


	21. Still the Hog's Head

Severus hears something he should not have. Right: that.

* * *

**Warnings: **bit of regional stereotyping. And I'll just refer you back to the Canon Compliance note at the beginning here, in case you're wondering about discrepancies with things Harry thinks he knows because totally trustworthy and unfailingly honest / completely with-it, sober, unbiased people told him stuff _hahahahahahahahahaha— _oh, er, sorry (snrgk), right, chapter!

* * *

Still The Hog's Head  


There'd been the supper press at the bar, so Abe hadn't personally escorted the nervous and frizzy-haired sparrow of a witch up to his brother. When things cleared up, he still hadn't seen the lanky kid from before her come down or leave.

Not just a lanky but a Lanky lad, he judged, from the way he'd been chatting at the bar before Al had gathered him up and he'd tightened up his posture and vowels. Wherever the boy was from, he had no business hanging about after his own appointment was over, but Abe would have expected a Northern kid to have _stuck_ to his own business, kept himself to himself. Especially with a nose like that; he would have gotten hit with every joke under the sun, growing up.

Something not right there. Had his fingers been stained? ...Yes, but not with ink. Abe headed upstairs.

The kid was still in the hallway, sitting splayed against the wall like a string-slashed puppet made of forest shadows. Aberforth stood in front of him for a good few seconds before he gave up and cleared his throat. Black hair that wasn't even trying slid away from a skinny, beaky, cheese-colored face as it rose to look up at him. The wheyish cast was new since he'd gone upstairs. That long-cuffed, willow-colored shirt and stark pine-needle waistcoat hadn't really been doing him any favors even before he went all shocky for whatever reason, and the grey, unseasonably chilled light from the windows wasn't helping.

"Looking to rent a room, were you?" he asked. "Register's at the bar."

The kid stared through him for a minute, then blinked and focused, although he still looked rather blank. He took a long breath, pushed it out shakily, and informed Abe, "Your brother is bloody petrifying."

"Full marks," he agreed sourly. He noted (with, just at the back of his mind, a bit of a smirk), that the lad wasn't putting on any high-flown public-school airs for _him._ Yet he'd been impeccable for Albus, and Abe had seen him about the village as cool-eyed as any velvet-robed pureblood, mussing the Black heir's hair, turning him bodily away from Honeydukes and towards the bookshop with an air of poorly-concealed amusement and getting sulking compliance instead of hexed for his trouble. And he knew Al was Aberforth's brother, even through Abe's dull robes, carefully grimy specs, and the growl his Godric's Hollow accent had subsided into? It was a choice, then, not unthinking contempt for the surely low-class barkeep?

He should bring that to Al's attention. He even might, if Al didn't get on his wick too much this evening. That kind of decision was different from letting someone maybe hear what was going on in a room he'd rented, though. You had to be reliable, the kind of establishment he ran. "Now, unless you were planning to polish the floor with your—"

Abe had been stampeded by goats once, and this was very like that. There was the scrambling, scalded-cat vertical leap as the kid (appropriately startled but inappropriately badly, in Abe's view) very nearly clawed through him to get behind him. And there was the impression of thunder, too, as a voice that didn't belong to anything human rocked the hall.

He grabbed the unresisting wizard by the arm and back and hustled him away as soon as he realized what was happening. The both of them were shocked silent by the booming onslaught, apart from the grunt that moving a full-grown wizard, however skinny, pulled out of Aberforth. But the voice didn't roll over them for long, and by the time he got them out of earshot, it had finished. Had tolled out far, far more than he would have preferred either of them to hear.

He also wasn't best pleased with the way the kid, a scant handful of seconds after quiet fell again, unfroze in the middle of the stairs and started wrenching away and snarling for Aberforth to let him go.

Naturally Aberforth did no such thing. They were both going to need obliviating. It wouldn't be long; the door upstairs had already slammed open, probably due to the unholy bruising thuds they were making, falling all over each other down the stairs.

Standing, horizontal, or sideways, the spindleshanked young wizard had no chance of pulling out of the barman's rottweiler grip. Certainly none of getting away before the running footsteps arrived. When he realized it, Aberforth's arms had barely been wrenched open for a split second by what felt like an _expelliarmus_ before the brat had vanished not only out of Abe's hands but out of his pub. He was gone before Albus had made it to the top of the stairs, trailed by the frizzy-haired and now deeply confused-looking witch, and Al was not dawdling.

The ringing the _crack!_ of apparition left in Abe's ears was nothing to the heart-slamming realization of how close he had just come to being side-along splinched by an unhinged (if perceptive) infant. And even that wasn't the main thing here, not nearly. Albus was _not_ going to like this.

Abe didn't much care, as a rule, whether his flash, glib, careless, arrogant, over-powered, color-blind sod of a brother liked things or not. For once in his self-centered, self-certain life, though, Al would have the right of it.

If he tried to be _understanding,_ or act like this made them _even,_ Aberforth would break his nose for him again.

**End Book I: May 1980**

* * *

**Next**:Lord Voldemort is given a great deal to consider.

**Notes**: This is the last chapter of the first part—which I know has been a slow roller, and I'm sorry about that. I didn't realize what the pace would be like, when I was looking at it all on one page, and I guess my beta didn't, either. Not that I really do actionplottygaspthrillers anyway, but now we've got the Dun Dun Catalyst out of the way I _think_ it should pick up? Most chapters from now on should have Plot Advancement, anyway, whether or not it's immediately obvious. I know, I know... 21 chapters in... n,n;

At any rate, I need to get some RL biz taken care of (GAH where did January go?!) and get farther ahead of the posting, and this is probably a terrible, horrible, evil place to pause, so... see you in a week or two? ^_^ Something like that. Interval length 95% dependent on me getting real!work done; applications MUST go out; but who amongst us is not susceptible to being engaged? (bat's eyes. Apostrophe intended: Severus's lashes are longer than mine.)

...That doesn't mean I won't be replying to comments, although it might not be as quickly.

I keep toying with the idea of doing each 'book' (probably each month) as a separate post... keep them to manageably-sized chapter lists and all, probably separated by Signifevents like this. Probably won't in the end, or maybe larger chunks than that... I dunno, thoughts?

**End-of-Section Snugs: **I'm not going to do a specific long roll-out of thanks and love because that's for the end of a thing and this isn't that. If you've been positive at me even ONCE, whether it was a review or a favorite or a follow, this is me hugging you now. Big squishes for more than that, and special recognition for Ebony, who has been o.O levels of faithful in reviewing. And in case anyone doubts whether your particular review could make a difference, I would not have been half as willing to do all the double-posts (or as motivated to stick to the schedule) if I hadn't had confidence that _someone_ was definitely always reading and would acknowledge both chapters each time. Posting into a void is sickening and discouraging and no one wants to do it, guys. I don't, and, honestly, wouldn't. So, again, love to everyone who's kept that from being an issue, including by reading along.

Yeah, I totally check the hit counts. Slash version's twice what it is for the gen version at time of posting, btw. (g)


End file.
